Long term health of mafiascum

[Phoenicks]

When I introduce friends to mafiascum, I always say "sign up ~2 weeks before you want to play". The newbie queue looks like it's sped up (the average looks like 4-5 days now). But if you're new, there is a wait other sites avoid. A friend I tried to get into mafia for years started playing a browser knock-off called Town of Salem. My friends can play offline or, increasingly, on Skype.

If my friends play newbies, they can only play one game at a time. The current setup, with 6 power roles to explain at once, demands players learn more than many other common setups. As executed, the Newbie section does not train new members, but weeds them out. It is a holding pen.

And when my friends want to design and host their own setup, they won't do it here: the requirements are too strict. Most hosts don't want to wait 3 months and host a trial Open/Mini first. They host offsite instead. We picked quality over quantity.

Mafiascum, at every level, takes more commitment than other mafia sites. We are not a general site, but an enthuasiast's site. Other forums that happen to have mafia sections draw new players. We only draw players who have already heard of mafia. With our reputation for snobbery* and the growing quality of offsite mafia, we are a poor choice for new players.

(*I think this comes from mafiascum's high average age, our strictness around beliefs like "Lynch All Liars," and that we let players get angrier than many other forums allow.)

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Epicmafia is trash, there is currently no where to play chat mafia games with any reasonable balance. I think MS filling that void could bring in a lot of users.

In it's current form, the chat isn't really a good way for mafia games imo.

I used to play epicmafia quite seriously and agree with you: there are no good chat-based communities anymore. Epicmafia is rotting. Town of Salem, though new, is a horrendously bloated beta. (The designers put more effort into letting you design your avatar and your avatar's house than game mechanics.) IRC mafias work, but only among friends. That scales poorly.

If hosts chat games with poor mechanics, those chat games will fail the site. How long are phases? Epicmafia averages ~2 minutes before locking votes in but doesn't automatically skip to the next phase. Town of Salem has a 30-second silent nightflip, a 30-second discussion period, and a 30-second voting period (yes really). How do you vote? Epicmafia, my majority, Town of Salem, by plurality, then a final lynch / don't lynch vote. How do you start a game? Town of Salem lets you organize friends and then join strangers, but leaves setup creation a random player, who can be voted out. (Imagine how America governed by presidental elections every 5 minutes.) Epicmafia lets you make a room and put it on the market, but you can't reliably join friends with strangers. Private Messages, whispers, roles, etc.?

Chat-based games are a Wild West. Standardizing them to match our ideas of Normal games would require tremendous debate.

I personally find the modding requirements here insulting. I've been playing for years and run multiple successful games offsite. If I wanted to run a game here it would need to be either sanitized of all fun and run by a committee or

picked by Llamafluff

a small selection of Open setups. Also it would take.. how many months to actually be run, and be required to be how many months long? I'm not interested enough in earning my Mafia Mod (TM) stripes to do that.

It's funny that the Micro Queue is such an innovation here to be honest, because it plays out the way mafia is played everywhere else. Quick, small, not needing as much time investment. I look at joining a non-Micro game right now and wow, it would cut into my Christmas holiday. Who has time for that for a forum-game?

Agreed completely.

I think this stems from site expectations: long games are standard here. Mafiascum has the longest deadlines of anywhere I know. (This includes sites with games of 40+ players (~5 days) and role madness of 25+ (~24 hours).) Since games last weeks, they need to be well-modded, which takes more rigmarole. High demands require high standards.

I love our long deadlines. Without them, we'd rely less on logic, lying, and listening than on cops and doctors.

I do think queue overhaul is a serious option. I think getting rid of queues, making threads with tags like [mini],[large] or [micro], [theme], [heavy mechanics] w/e. And then listmods just need to approve the creation of a thread, let the free market decide who's games fill. Maybe limit certain tags to certain amounts of experience. Perhaps limit -too- many games of the same type from going into signups at once. Perhaps allow vetted off site experience. The list mods job could move to doing that from maintaining the queue.

Pretending mith approves, I don't think destroying the queue would work. The chaos of destroying the queue for a market would undermine all of mafiascum's system. Markets work well, but privatizations are notoriously difficult. It would be too easy to have a surfeit of hosts. If Newbie games are a public service, what would happen to them after ditching the queue? If they stayed as-is, would they be overwhelmed by the competition with other games?

For the record, I agree with this. (Great post.) Ideally, I would like to start sending out zoraster-style surveys to newbies who've just completed games.

Obvious caveat: the tiny pool of newbies who 1) complete a game, and 2) are invested enough to fill out the survey would self-select to be those who can handle convoluted roles. (PMing flakers to ask what turned them away from the site would obviously get an abysmal response rate.) But it's always experienced players bickering in MD over what

we

think is best for new players.

I like this idea. However: a lot of what's up for discussion is material newbies aren't familiar with. "Were there too many roles to learn?" and "Were phases too long?" might work. "Did you like the setup" will get vague answers from people who haven't experienced many setups.

More on topic, there are some checks and balances to mafiascum that I'm quite attached to. I like that we're attracting a more serious clientele, and would not want to lower our standards too much just to appeal to some nebulous idea of WEB 2.0 HIP TWEETING MILLENNIALS. But I'm an old lady who loves forums.

I really agree with this. At every level mafiascum chooses quality over quantity. I'd rather be on the internet's best mafia site than the internet's largest. (The best option would be to not have to choose.)

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Chat-based games are a Wild West. Standardizing them to match our ideas of Normal games would require tremendous debate.

?

How so it seems pretty straight forward. Just implement common forum mechanics into chat mafia. Obviously different times and such.

We implement common forum mechanics: the computer only ends phases on majority, implements normal roles as we know them; everyone agrees to NAR or some other universal night action resolution; we use the chat we have now with minor modifications; etc. etc. (Already, we're doing things differently from most F2F and many IRC players we'd want to attract.)

What happens when players disconnect? Do we punish the account, or inflict a waiting penalty, or assume a good faith wifi problem and do nothing?

Do we enable a private message or whisper system? Do we ban private messages in play and trust users not to cheat? Do we change the chat so that users can't privately message each other? If someone threatens me via PM on site, I can report the PM; how do we enforce our site rules on chat?

How do we make games? Do we have a queue, or do hosts make games to which players join, or can players join in private first and then join a game? Do hosts make setups and then post them, or is there a fixed list, or do players haggle about the setup while they're in sign-ups? ('Host' as in the first player in the room since the computer handles admin.)

Since forum games are kept on the wiki, do we need ranks for chat games? Do we treat them casually, without records? Is system more like IRC or epicmafia? Surely we don't keep logs of every chat game? How else do we incentivize proper play?

We'll all disagree. Someone (mith et al.) has to decide. All other chat mafia sites scaled poorly and attracted allcaps trolls and griefers. It would take great effort to make something that attracts new, quality users, or else isn't only an IRC for the players we already have.

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Do we enable a private message or whisper system? Do we ban private messages in play and trust users not to cheat? Do we change the chat so that users can't privately message each other? If someone threatens me via PM on site, I can report the PM; how do we enforce our site rules on chat?

There is no automated process for this atm. Adding one is a reasonable suggestion. With that said all messages are logged so if someone ever says anything inappropriate to you, report it manually via PM to a discussion mod or admin.

Are private messages logged so admins can view them? (I don't think this has ever come up.) If not, I could report fakes manually.

Most of these seem like secondary concerns. If using IRC, anyone could run a game any way they wanted. All you need is channel operator status.

This means you now need a system for deciding who gets channel op. (Say, anyone can open a room and get op status, and players join, like epicmafia.) This still leaves undecided what's considered 'normal'. If you leave night action resolution up to each channel op, then they're hosting instead of a bot. PMs, whispers, and ranks are secondary -- but if we only impose forum mafia onto chat mafia, it will not appeal to players who don't like forum mafia.

I would love a mafiascum chat game. I think it's a lot more involved than we're presuming. (And if I could code something up, I would.)

I don't think we agree at all actually. You say logic, lying and listening, I say apathy and a playerbase that votes and ends games because fuckit we've been playing forever let's just get it over with. Games do not last weeks. They last Months. What I should have said was if I look into joining a Large right now, it would cut into my plans for

Febuary

. In my personal and doubtlessly unpopular opinion I don't think a game day should be longer then 1 week, maximum. There is such a thing as just too damn long.

How often / Where do you play offsite? Everywhere else I've ever tried uses Power Roles way more than we do. That's what I mean by logic, lying, and listening. Games here do last inordinately long; I like it that way but agree with your point that 'normal' here is abnormal everywhere else.

I agree with what I quoted: the Micro Queue, an innovation here, is normal everywhere else.

It would be highly undesirable for mods to just start running 48h deadline games without making it VERY clear that it was a function of their game. As I said before, the queue structure forces an amount of homogeneity and deadline times fit into that.

What about a new queue?

Most would-be-hosts don't slink off because they can't host C9++ or Fire and Ice; they want to host large games with new roles and flavor.

Could we try something like our Large Game queue that has much relaxed modding requirements, in exchange for requiring much shorter deadlines? Could we have a queue that works like players are used to from other sites?

Players who want the style we're used to with week-long phases would still, of course, create demand and supply for the kinds of games we're used to. And if deadlines are much shorter (say, 48 hours), would we need such heavy requirements on modding?

People are conflating "fad" with "trend" -- we're not saying we should all go out and buy Furbys.

Great post.

[Phoenicks]

Also, on newbie games:

I liked 2of4 much more than Matrix6, and stopped joining as an SE entirely because I didn't like the new setup. Am I the only one? Newbie games would fill faster if we had more SE's playing.

And, do we even care about SE's in newbie games? Right now we're trying to spread our values and teach newbies how fun mafia is in the same game. This means we need a setup that attracts the interest of SE's who have seen it all... while also accommodating newbies who haven't.

Would newbies be more coherent if we vastly shortened deadlines there to retain interest? (Would it be a problem if newbies who enjoyed short games didn't graduate onto longer games?)

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What happens when players disconnect? Do we punish the account, or inflict a waiting penalty, or assume a good faith wifi problem and do nothing?

Automate a replacement system.

For chat games?

Do what we do with forum games.

Why?

(Agreed with the rest of your post, or didn't disagree enough to comment.)

Seperate note, I think the new newbie setup is probably the most confusing we've had yet.

Is there any reason we don't just do F11 minus the last setup? It's not the most balanced but it's simple and introduces the users to the site without having to worry about roles. (Because let's be honest, most people who have mafia experience know what those roles are so it won't be any sort of shock)

I would support something like this. Matrix6 is a step back from 2of4. Roleblocker/Jailkeeper interactions can get screwy and non-intuitive. (Who remembers what happens when RB blocks JK, JK jails RB, and RB kills without looking it up?)

2of4 was a good setup. I think the best part of 2of4 was that you didn't know if there were 1 or 2 power roles. This allowed fakeclaims and stopped claims from being auto-clear. This encourages some subtle, deep plays without being too complex for anyone to understand. 2of4 did balance problems, especially (iirc) in the Jailkeeper setups. Jailkeeper adds NAR complexity unneeded in newbie games. But Matrix6 is worse.

Your proposed 1E2 would keep only the good parts of 2of4. I'd like to discuss making this a newbie setup. This is almost separate from mafiascum's long-term health now; new thread?

It just sucks because look at the setup. It's night start. It's the most common on site setup.

I really like the standard setup. It's a quick, short game that is perfect for chat. It gets deep depending on how nightactions play out. (Doctor protecting Night 1 plays very differently from doc dying and cop getting an innocent.) In all cases, lynching between the cops is sufficient for a scum win but not a town win. (But it's harder to fakeclaim.) I think many players have a "just one more" reaction to this setup.

I agree there are better setups (4 VTs, 1 cop, 1 gov, 1 godfather, 1 goon, night start) for chat mafia. But this also belongs in a different thread.

[Phoenicks]

What about a new queue?

Most would-be-hosts don't slink off because they can't host C9++ or Fire and Ice; they want to host large games with new roles and flavor.

Could we try something like our Large Game queue that has much relaxed modding requirements, in exchange for requiring much shorter deadlines? Could we have a queue that works like players are used to from other sites?

Players who want the style we're used to with week-long phases would still, of course, create demand and supply for the kinds of games we're used to. And if deadlines are much shorter (say, 48 hours), would we need such heavy requirements on modding?

Bumping this.

[Phoenicks]

What about a new queue?

Most would-be-hosts don't slink off because they can't host C9++ or Fire and Ice; they want to host large games with new roles and flavor.

Could we try something like our Large Game queue that has much relaxed modding requirements, in exchange for requiring much shorter deadlines? Could we have a queue that works like players are used to from other sites?

Players who want the style we're used to with week-long phases would still, of course, create demand and supply for the kinds of games we're used to. And if deadlines are much shorter (say, 48 hours), would we need such heavy requirements on modding?

Bumping this.

(now on the other hand, if a new queue for slightly more quick-paced games were to be introduced, which is an idea I would support but which would deserve a separate thread for discussion

Is there interest in something like this? Longer games are the norm here, but there's no reason why we couldn't have a queue with shorter games and fewer restrictions (that isn't limited like the Micro queue).

Something like this could be an easy fix that doesn't destroy the queue system while offering new games to attract more players.

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mods, particularly in theme games, have lots of lattitude for deadlines. People are definitely allowed to run 1 day deadline games as a theme game if they want

This would be a niche game on site. It would be marketed "one day phases!" This would not attract new players in the least.

Obviously the players coming in will change if the players we have change. We can't change our players by talking about it. Hosts will not, individually, decide to dramatically change tastes by hosting shorter deadlines in a big enough shift to affect the kinds of games we offer. We can only change the site top-down here.

Almost every newbie or discontented player surveyed here has complained about our phase length. Why isn't there interest in offering a separate queue for shorter games? Until you offer something like that, marketing, design, and SEO will only make a marginal difference.

[Phoenicks]

Why isn't there interest in offering a separate queue for shorter games? Until you offer something like that, marketing, design, and SEO will only make a marginal difference.

It's quite hard to tell how it would actually fair. How would you propose it be set up though?

Loose hosting requirements. Host one game at a time. 24- or 48-hour phases minimum, 5-6 day phases maximum enforced. Sign-up for individual games, like the Theme Park.* Contact individual mods for replacements.

A fast queue only needs to function like queues on other sites. They don't expect games to have huge time requirements, which undercuts almost every reason for host quality control. The main point of the system would be to avoid the fast queue affecting other parts of the site. This means specifying exactly what kinds of games belong in there (mainly the kids of games other sites would run). Other queues could keep their strict modding requirements and enforced waiting, which would keep a barrier up from players who won't play long games from playing long games.

No one here wants to make mafiascum like every other forum. We don't need to. Add a new section that scratches the same itch other websites do, while keeping our normal structure perfectly in tact.

*(Most sites I've played on run on some version of this, even if it means hosts post in a queue that has no limit on number of games in signups. This means hosts host when they're ready, and enthusiasm doesn't drain away in a line. It also reduces the expectations that require strong rules in other queues.)

We aren't going to institute queues just to see what happens. I'm loathe to just add more queues as I think our player and mod population barely fills the number we have, so I'd rather see a new queue replace an old one than just keep adding queues.

I understand the point that in order to attract people who like short deadlines it we would need to provide a consistent stream of short deadline games, but there also needs to be demand from our current players.

Zoroaster, maybe this is unfair: I get the feeling you don't want to make any changes, and won't hear any arguments in favor of them.

Almost every other mafia forum has fast games. Multiple players in this thread have expressed interest in fast games. We are having a marathon this weekend. Why do you think there isn't any demand for fast games?

If you want to run a really short game, I highly encourage you to do so. The Large Theme queue is the perfect place for a very short deadline game as it would allow you to play large mostly balanced games with fewer killing roles.

This isn't about balance or number of killing roles. I'm not sure what your point is.

I'm not allowed to host a Large Theme. Many players aren't. I've hosted about a dozen games offsite, half with 20+ players. This rightly doesn't count, but does make your requirements the more insulting:

"A moderator must demonstrate that they have moderated two games on mafiascum.net in the Mini-Normal, Open, Mini-Theme, or Large Normal Queues. Alternatively, the second game of experience may be fulfilled by successfully moderating three (3) Micro games, at least one of which must have been designed by the moderator."

A Mini-Theme and Large Normal, however, both require hosting a Mini-Normal first. The Mini-Normal queue is 12 mods long. How long will I wait in that list? 12 days? 12 weeks? Why, after I've waited to host a Mini-Normal for 2 months, spent another 2 in execution, waited a month in a different queue to get experience, and waited a month for my record to be vetted, my game approved, my sign-ups to be finished, and my game to start, would I run a short phases experiment? What guarantee do I have that the list mod won't require longer phases, as he is allowed to do? ("listmod may impose additional restrictions")

This is not a system amenable to fast games.

I don't think you'd need a separate queue, either. I don't immediately see what would be wrong with just running a few Newbie Games straight away with this format; the best way might to be to offer sign-ups for two Newbie Games at the same time, one with 7:1 and one with the traditional 14:1, and let newbies choose which one they preferred

The mods have decided (fairly, I think) that Newbie games will only prepare players for the games we already offer. This is good: however, because we are not training players for short games, we (supposedly) don't have players who want short games, so we don't have short games, so we don't train players for short games...

This is self-fulfilling.

The other thing to consider is that mods of very quick games have to be VERY on point. Updating a vote count once a day probably is insufficient.

Why? I've seen plenty of games work with 0-2 votecounts a day. Players get by.

Weren't we already talking about automating votecounts? This sounds like you being difficult.

Genuine question, and I guess this is aimed at maybe fferyllt who has the experience from both, but is playing 1-week days significantly different to playing 2-week days?

Yes: there's not enough time for anyone to miss a few days, lurk, etc. Players have to generally be on-point all week. But with week-long phases, there's an expectation that "we have time, we don't need to rush".

I think it's worth pointing out that PLAYERS are in control of the timing too. If players want to end a day every 36 hours they can.

This is an unreasonable standard. If I wanted to prove that not all games need cops, should I refuse to inspect at night?

[Phoenicks]

Zoroaster, maybe this is unfair: I get the feeling you don't want to make any changes, and won't hear any arguments in favor of them.

not in the least. I'm pretty receptive to changes, but I'm not receptive to "let's just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" because we also have to consider maintaining our present state as well as grow future ms members. Any change needs to be pretty well thought through.

What do you think of my queue proposal? Please tell me what about it needs more thought. (That's not angry rhetoric, I mean it earnestly.)

edit: trying the same thing with "werewolf" was a disaster. Even if people know it as werewolf, they'll get better results with "mafia".

Probably because "mafia" has been the name of the game since its inception, and "werewolf" has only recently taken up steam with things like One Night Werewolf. Ergo all the online communities have been calling themselves and the game mafia for quite a while.

With a name like "mafiascum" this is inevitable, but is there some way of fixing this besides editing some search engine mechanics? Bulbapedia, I remember, encouraged memes like this to spread to advertise itself:

Spoiler:

Some mafia setups or nightactions could be represented in flowchart, and I've never seen diagrams for the mechanics that befit a wiki. Surely this is mostly a waste of time, but aren't diagrams and graphs something we could provide?

[Phoenicks]

What do you think of my queue proposal? Please tell me what about it needs more thought. (That's not angry rhetoric, I mean it earnestly.)

which proposal? there have probably been a dozen or so ideas in this thread.

Spoiler:

Loose hosting requirements. Host one game at a time. 24- or 48-hour phases minimum, 5-6 day phases maximum enforced. Sign-up for individual games, like the Theme Park.* Contact individual mods for replacements.

A fast queue only needs to function like queues on other sites. They don't expect games to have huge time requirements, which undercuts almost every reason for host quality control. The main point of the system would be to avoid the fast queue affecting other parts of the site. This means specifying exactly what kinds of games belong in there (mainly the kids of games other sites would run). Other queues could keep their strict modding requirements and enforced waiting, which would keep a barrier up from players who won't play long games from playing long games.

No one here wants to make mafiascum like every other forum. We don't need to. Add a new section that scratches the same itch other websites do, while keeping our normal structure perfectly in tact.

*(Most sites I've played on run on some version of this, even if it means hosts post in a queue that has no limit on number of games in signups. This means hosts host when they're ready, and enthusiasm doesn't drain away in a line. It also reduces the expectations that require strong rules in other queues.)

Something mafiascum could do that would be pretty sweet is to make little "mafia theory flashcards" of sorts with basic tips and tricks for play as each role, as well as a card explaining NAR and stuff, then have them printable for free on our website. Have the ms logo and URL on them, take them to board game clubs etc, as well as anywhere that plays offline mafia.

This could be a great idea.

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I have a hard time accepting that standardization is necessary given that the site has run mafia games just fine for over a decade without automation.

I have a hard time accepting that democracy is necessary given that humanity has survived just fine for centuries without common basic rights.

That is not a strawman of Zach's position because it is actually an argument against democracy. Zach's argument is actually an argument against automation.

Zach, you don't even know what chamber is planning and you've already decided you don't like it.

Nowhere has Zach said "I don't like this". He has noticed automation's requirements, and said he finds them unreasonable.

I think this particular change is an over reach because it makes the adoption of automated vote counting and vote tags required.

Considering this process will speed up and make everything else more efficient, I don't see a valid argument backing this up.

Even if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, does that make it justifiable? Surely, for instance, humanity would benefit by replacing your house with a hospital.

This is rather a pointless argument. Why not let Zach doomsay until chamber presents his work?