Long term health of mafiascum

[Porochaz]

Dropping a poll on someone after their first game here is going to result in more people fleeing.

[Porochaz]

I would make it clear there is a survey but yeah sending PM's about surveys and stuff seems naggy and annoying and a little desperate and I would certainly see it as a negative. (and actually if I were sent a survey now, I'd still be a bit pissed off by it), having the mod post at the end of games etc. seems like the most sensible and least intrusive way of doing it. It also sets a tone on this website, which would A. almost certainly be false and B. not a good one, where we, as a site, just care a little too much about people's opinions.

At the point of a newbie finishing their first game, we want to try and maintain them. By sending a PM it's like an annoying puppy coming up to you and going "DIDYA LIKE IT?!!! DIDYA! DIDYA!!!" I'd be put off, at the end of my first newbie, I kinda wanted to explore a bit on my own and find my feet, and this feels, although not the intention, very big brother like.

[Porochaz]

I would also guess that you would actually have a better answer rate if you post it at the end of a game as well, rather than PMing it to people.

[Porochaz]

xylbot for sitechat would be pretty cool.

Good jokes.

[Porochaz]

Couple of things I'd identify, apologize if this is echoing others;
1) People don't "do" forums much anymore. People want instantaneous; one of the big draws for EpicMafia was the fact that it was real-time chat-based.

2) Seems to me that the first graph illustrates a potentially un-natural "boom", and the resulting drop down establishes a return to normal, healthy growth. A decline in and of itself is not necessarily a decline, per se. Check the history of stocks that have had un-natural booms.

3) Mafia-type live games seem to be growing amongst at least my generation (mid 20s). Particularly One Night Werewolf. If people have a local community to play face-to-face, they aren't going to seek online outlets very often.

None of these seem to be faults of MS or how it is run. It's just nature and the resulting environment.

This is a good post.

I agree with the idea that we need to get a wider variation of styles of mafia out there. Focusing on more instantaneous styles. Note: Focus not Change. I get the feeling that the posts describing how long it takes to play a game, let alone mod a game probably have some truth to them. If I look into joining a forum, particularly where I want to play a game, I want to actually get into the game as fast as possible. I'd be put off by the long wait.

That said, modding is a different kettle of fish and I think the system we have at the moment (barring some caveats - which I've gone into before) is a good one. It may have been chamber himself who suggested to me a long time ago that why we have such a long wait is that we generally get the keen people remaining who want to mod games, and generally do a better job because they have had to wait. Might have been Flay, actually. Overhauling the queue, in the way chamber suggests, makes me shudder, we are complaining about people not coming in enough, I dont think this helps. In my head all I can see is a huge mess, with too many games and not enough players. It's too bulky currently, yes. But to overhaul it completely I think is a mistake.

(the caveats are to do with the amount of hoops you have to jump through to run a game round here, then in what is somewhat related to the current discussion, the stuff at the end)

There are things that need to be fixed.

The wiki, which apparently was a main draw for people in the past, probably needs to be overhauled and have what more casual people are looking for front and centre. Make it the go to for the casual player on there own site and then hopefully they will be pulled here.

We need things like skype mafia and chat mafia in house. The fact that we are currently running skype mafia through a semi-rarely updated thread is not good. I agree that getting our own skype type thing is stupid. But we need to have these resources highlighted.

We need to use our social networking resources better and we probably need to create some more. Twitter, we need to be advertising games on there, we need to be repeating it on facebook, we need to be on page 1 of google when you type in mafia game. (I believe google should tailor results?, but currently the wiki is 11th on the list, under mafiawiki, No mention of mafiascum. Mafiascum is 26th, epicmafia is on the front page, other resources on how to play are on the front page.

I wasn't sure about the redesign but my first thought on the link reck put up was "that looks professional", and yes this meant to be a game site, but I don't think mafiascum has a "I want to look around" vibe anymore. I think that's going to take more than a new skin.

Anyway, my thoughts. If I had any programming know how, and I had even the slightest bit of time at the moment I would try and help but at current, I can't.

(also the site base is getting older and people are leaving cause they don't have time)

[Porochaz]

Posting it at the end of the game won't get any feedback from a newbie who's killed early on in the game and didn't enjoy the experience so left. They'll never see it.

If thats the case, then I don't see them answering anything anyway.

[Porochaz]

Probably impossible. I don't think you can do both.

Also more unwieldy and would look more messy and uninviting.

[Porochaz]

That also assumes people know what they are looking for when they go into the queue.

[Porochaz]

Was talking to zor there.

Basically Im not seeing the advantages of what you are suggesting, though, chamber.

[Porochaz]

I think for new players our queue system can be quite confusing and misleading as to how active we are. You can see very old signup threads on the first page, and often there wont be any because no large themes are in signups. It makes the signup process and activity level more visible if we give each game its own signup thread.

Wouldn't having a queue archive solve this?

[Porochaz]

I think for new players our queue system can be quite confusing and misleading as to how active we are. You can see very old signup threads on the first page, and often there wont be any because no large themes are in signups. It makes the signup process and activity level more visible if we give each game its own signup thread.

Wouldn't having a queue archive solve this?

That just means there are sometimes no visible games at all instead of dated ones.

Im confused. I mean just remove the completed ones, rather than the ongoing ones. The problem of having no visible games if there are none running doesn't seem to be an issue to me? Especially since I would assume more people would be inclined to run a Large Theme lets say if there is no wait to do so...

[Porochaz]

I think for new players our queue system can be quite confusing and misleading as to how active we are. You can see very old signup threads on the first page, and often there wont be any because no large themes are in signups. It makes the signup process and activity level more visible if we give each game its own signup thread.

Wouldn't having a queue archive solve this?

That just means there are sometimes no visible games at all instead of dated ones.

Im confused. I mean just remove the completed ones, rather than the ongoing ones. The problem of having no visible games if there are none running doesn't seem to be an issue to me? Especially since I would assume more people would be inclined to run a Large Theme lets say if there is no wait to do so...

Its unintuitive for game signups to be in both queue threads and outside of them. Frankly its unintuitive to have them in queue threads at all imo and is just a product of how old they are and how they were originally done.

Ok, I was just referring to the Large Themes and old queue threads at the moment, and archiving the threads once they are done.

In reference to your suggestion I am still very much a large nope, for reasons stated upwards. We want to direct anyone with an interest in the site to get signed up to a game as fast as possible, I think currently (and I know your about to point me to the threads where newbies dont know where the queue is) the system we have is more efficient than what you are thinking of.

Even with all the colour coding in the world what your suggesting would be a mess and a lot more difficult to sift through. For older members it would be a pain, for newer members, they just wouldn't do it. The nice thing about the queue system as it stands (even with the flaws) is that you know where exactly to go for the kind of game you want. This new system would not do that.

(furthermore, eventually if you start colour coding for different games and then more colours for the state the game is in, it's going to look more like a site for people who want headaches rather than a mafia site)

[Porochaz]

There have been increasing worries once again over the long term health of mafiascum and without being able to add anything new on to this conversation beyond being dismayed at the fact that the main site is not in the first 10 pages of the search "mafia game" and wondering with the popularity of one night werewolf or whatever its called, looking at maybe rebranding slightly to incorporate that/buying and redirecting a domain name to this site. (yeah, Im betting my lack of website building knowledge is showing through already) I don't know, but this does feel like a conversation that should be looked at more. Because whilst I am not particularly worried about the site not lasting beyond a certain time. I do think, as chamber said in the first post, we need to look at how we evolve as a site to be able to maintain it's usage into the future.

[Porochaz]

I searched mafia forum which weirdly gave me vastly different results from forum mafia, but I am on a different computer now, so...

online mafia puts me 4th on this computer, but underneath epic mafia, who I am currently viewing as our mortal enemies.

Even so, as membership has been down, it's still something to look at.

[Porochaz]

They are similar though, so it might be worth taking advantage of.

[Porochaz]

Also people's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. I like longer phases, but not this long. I would suggest 5-day day phases and 1-day night phases (maybe 2 if there's tons of roles).

This shouldn't and won't happen.

[Porochaz]

We were waiting for you to get started mathdino then you left for 3 years!

[Porochaz]

Points lead to elitism, elitism leads to class wars, class wars lead to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads somewhere...

[Porochaz]

I think EM can use a competitive queue in a way that would be difficult for us to replicate simply because we don't play as many games as you can on EM, etc. because our games last many, many times longer.

That said, I think RECORD KEEPING would be positive. Wins, losses, perhaps broken down in scum and town, etc. It doesn't have to be something where we publicize the "best" player on the site from it, but having some way to really look back at your games and make some comparisons would be neat.

This.

I don't see the point in ranked games. Or how you would implement them. Remember that this is somewhat a team game, and getting ranked for what is in effect others performance seems poor. Also tiering players off never seems like a good idea. Record keeping I like, however. Because - statistics. But only really for personal use.