Change the Mini Normal limit from 12 to 13.

[zoraster]

I am in favor. If I had not already nominated hoopla for a scummy I would now. I think we could give a three month period of overlap.

By the way, if this is done, it seems like making mini themes max 13 would be a good idea.

[zoraster]

My only thing against this was the present slowness of the queues, but someone proved it won't negatively affect it too much, so I approve.

at the start, it might speed things up as players who have avoided the normal queue try it out for novelty's sake. but I imagine that's short-lasting.

While I think the length of the queue is somewhat of a problem, getting mods to mod faster isn't something that should primarily drive what player count we use (it could be a secondary consideration, I think... something to tack on to a well reasoned argument). If it's starting to affect

player

wait times, then there's a serious problem. If the average game wait time starts to go over a week or so, I think we're looking at something that could potentially be a problem. Because I'm procrastinating, I think I'm going to try to figure out how long the average wait has been over the past X months for mini-normals and themes. Someone has said 5 days, but this seems to smack of "common wisdom" rather than actual evidence.

[zoraster]

For what it's worth, I did the number crunching: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopi ... 1#p2377641

Let's assume that the number 5.19 can be counted on as the mean wait time for a new game. If we say that players join games at a consistent rate (more on this assumption later), that means someone is joining the game roughly every 10.5 hours. (0.4325 of a day). Assuming constant join rate, that means a 13 player game will fill in roughly 135 hours or roughly 5.6 days.

That makes the mean wait time for a new mod, assuming 37 mods in the queue stays constant, will go from 192 days to 207 days or 6.4 months and 6.9 months, respectively. I'd say that's a fair trade for better games.

That said, my guess is this will not happen this way. Players tend to join more often when they feel the momentum of a game's signups is moving it toward a start. A game that "feels" closer to starting is more likely to get sign-ups, especially in a normal queue where all games are ostensibly the "same" type. My guess is that the point where players feel a game is starting to become viable will not change markedly when we move from 12 players to 13 players. Therefore, I expect that the join rate will not be consistent, and more players will join. But that's all conjecture.

[zoraster]

Aren't 8:3 games actually theoretically more balanced than 9:3 games? EV-wise anyway?

Either way, I'd hate to see three scum games go. I think games where there's a scum

team

are more fun than those where there are not. I think a two person scum partnership doesn't quite have the feeling of community that a 3 person team does. Also, I think having three around gives rise to more connect-the-scum analysis, which is good.

[zoraster]

The obvious solution is more night starts. I don't really understand why they got out of style anyway.

The reason, I think, is two-fold:

1. Reason of fun only. It's just not that fun to sign up for a game -- especially one you're excited for -- and then get offed without having done

anything

. You might as well not have played the game.

2. Swing. The night start asks players to make night choices with

no

knowledge of the game except what the mod has given them. In a day start, night actions can almost always be argued to be non-random, and thus swing is (theoretically) not an issue because it is through a player's skill of reads, tactics, etc.vs. other players skill in deception, tactics, etc. But in a night start, there's none of that. The only thing there is are player reputations. And generally speaking, we don't want players killed, investigated, etc. based only off of their reputation. In other words, night start N0 actions are more or less random (or at least not based off of the play of the game), and thus are swingy-er

[zoraster]

In the battle between what's good for the player and what's good for the players, insofar as they are different, the players should win. The wait time for one game is hardly worth notice, and that is the wait that will affect a player.

[zoraster]

the effect of having first-time mods limited to the small queue and having veteran mods doing the fuller games would be to bog down the first-time mod's by a startling degree. I don't think there exists much demand for smaller games, personally, but even if there were, I doubt that would outweigh the number of people who sign up for veteran mods 12 and 13 player games rather than do a new mod's 9 person game. The change in size will not adequately address this.

Anyway, C9 is an open variation. It seems to me that the open queue combined with having mods who can run smaller games if they want in the mini-theme queue is perfectly sufficient.

[zoraster]

Yeah. I don't support a new tiny queue or whatever you want to call it, but I don't think there's an inherent flaw in that game. The expected win rate is still going to be pretty low for town.

[zoraster]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz= ... =&safe=off

best i could do without actually doing work.

It seems to come up occasionally.

[zoraster]

I don't understand what you're getting at, Zach. Minis are by far the most popular game-type on the site... shifting the 'new mods' from Mini Normal to Micro Normal Closed (or whatever) isn't likely to help with demand, since this is literally the first time I've seen an outcry for smaller games since I joined the site. It'll help slightly with Thok's Law, but I'm not at all sure that will overcome the increase in complexity and fracturing of demand. How will limits work with Micros? Could you be in 4 Minis and 7 Micros? Etc... like I said, you

can

run smaller games in the Mini Queues right now, they're just uncommon. I think that should tell us something about demand, especially from the mod side. The Open Queue (Zito's recent game aside, sorry dude) seems to handle that "I want to get through as fast as possible" side, and Mini Normal is for those who want to run their own game, within limits.

I agree with this, but I think the idea that the open queue is faster is probably either exaggerated or not true. I didn't do a full analysis like i did with the others, but I did look at a couple of mods and the typical wait time was 5 months from "/in as mod" to "game full"

It seems totally unnecessary to (a) create a separate queue and (b) to change mod requirements so new mods can no longer mod mini-normals. I suspect it'll have the effect of making it even harder for new mods to get that game under their belt.

[zoraster]

I think people over emphasize the "just doing it to get it over with it" aspect for normal games. Open games, yeah. I think that's true. Mini-normals, I do not think that is true.