Team Mafia 2015 Winners: Young and Beautiful

[Tammy]

Are the captains in?

To the best of my knowledge, yes. We don't yet have a 4th, though.

Yep and yep. The fourth is something we need to figure out eventually.

[Tammy]

Can you say things like:
FoS Zoraster. My teammate mith thinks you are scum and is a better scum hunter than me.

^Still wondering about this. And in case it wasn't obvious, I meant in the game thread.

We definitely were allowed to do this last time. We didn't talk cross games, but we were able to say what our teammates thought.

[Tammy]

5. Young and Beautiful were the only team that won all four games. I know it was suggested in the dead thread that something other than wins should determine things, but ultimately any team that is perfect in their games should be eligible for a victory.

As someone who didn't participate (didn't know how cancer treatment would affect my time on site) but followed along, I feel fairly confidently neutral in saying this: This is pretty terrible.

It's been shown long ago that win/loss records don't really correlate in any way to talent/ability or contribution. This is especially true when game imbalance and uneven distribution of factions plays a factor. I never won a paragon based on win/loss record, and though I haven't tallied my raw statistics in years, I know that at least as of like 2011 I had more town losses than wins. There's something fundamentally wrong with the scoring when a team that did relatively little in their victories happened to be the only team that went 4-0, because their non-teammates carried them to victory four times. The idea that overall win/loss record should be a major determining factor in Team Mafia is about as backwards as can be.

If there is something "fundamentally wrong" with it, then there is something fundamentally wrong with Team Mafia as a whole. Either we operate under the (perhaps fictional) idea that skill influences wins or we don't. But I'm not having a winner of Team Mafia as a whole be a team that won fewer games than another team. It would be unfair, it would defeat the purpose of Team Mafia, etc. It's one thing to use subjective measures as a tie-breaker. It's another to act as if wins and losses don't matter -- they do.

Ultimately I don't know how much simpler or fairer it can be than this: If you win more mafia games than other teams, you win Team Mafia. Any other standard is unacceptable.

This actually doesn't make much sense because if you objectively look at the players in this team you'd see that they comparatively did less and were somewhat of a drain on their team in each of their games due to various reasons. Anenenin tried once he replaced in sure, but the rest of the team mates either lurked or were busy and lurked and lucked themselves into a win.

I do in many ways understand the irony of me making this observation since so many people were upset that we won team mafia last time when we were replacements, but even though we were a team of replacements, each of our team put in a lot of effort into our game. We may not have been the best players but the effort was there and was obvious from how we played and how we worked together as a team.

It's not really the same here.

[Tammy]

Yeah, I mean everyone isn't going to be happy all the time. If we had things right though, if we had gotten the normal game right then three teams would have gotten all four game wins which would have made the winner less clear or even someone else as winner, but young and beautiful weren't in the normal game, and it feels weird/wrong somehow that our mistake in normal gave someone the win that wasn't even in normal. And it bums me out that the other teams that would have been up for a win put in a lot of effort into their games.

(If I'm completely wrong about how the wins would have occurred had we been right never mind this point.)

[Tammy]

But like the westeros team only didn't win four games because of the nightless game, which is probably the hardest game for scum to win in the first place but were instrumental in the large theme win due to the titus vig which turned that game completely around.

[Tammy]

Why even play to win if sweeping might not even matter?

are you kidding

I think it's a fair question, particularly for people who feel like their play style isn't particularly valued by others.

But what about for people who don't actually play. Singer vigged scum in the large and the winning team was still trying to make an argument that she was scum because the player hadn't been reading the game or the rules.

That's not disvaluing play style, that's just asking that people who actually put some effort in are recognized. (I mean granted someone on his team pointed out his incorrect theory after some time, but still that's a problem when awarding a winner I think.)

[Tammy]

I mean I realize you can't make everyone happy in these games and the winner isn't going to be completely objective, it just would have been nice to see a team that were working together and putting in effort to their games, even if they were wrong, win.

[Tammy]

I loved being an all town team.

[Tammy]

I do think there's some merit to all teams playing all games.

[Tammy]

I don't mean to pick on you Tammy but it's extremely discouraging to continue to see comments about how my team doesn't deserve the win because we didn't try hard enough or didn't work together as a team enough or aren't good enough players because that's all insulting and not true. I gave it my all for the game I played and I know my teammates did too. And we worked hard on this whether it translated well or not.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound insulting to you or anyone else, and maybe my frustrations with things that had nothing to do with mafia yesterday impacted my response and made it seem like I'm mad that you guys won. I don't think you're bad players at all. I don't know much about psyche or wgeurts, but I very much like playing with you and espeonage. Maybe I'm unfairly extending psyche and espionage's not doing stuff in their games to you guys; I didn't read all the games, as I myself was a terrible teammate this go around due to being busy.

I also in part feel bad because our mistake in the normal cost two other teams the win, and when I look at that game - as it's the one I spent the most time with as the rest of us died so early - Pieguy put her heart and soul in that game, and I feel bad that our mistake cost that team the possible win. (and when I compared it to things like espeonage not wanting to boon singer because he thought she was scum even after she vigged titus because he clearly wasn't reading, it bums me out more.) But that really is just one instance and I don't know how the rest of your team played, and I don't know what the other team was like that was up for a win if we had gotten it right in the normal.

Congratulations on your win, and I'm sorry for being grumpy.

[Tammy]

I guess it could depend on the town, but it just seems incredibly difficult for scum to win a nightless game. And not necessarily because there's no way to get rid of the strong town players, but also because the lack of a night phase doesn't give you a refresher period and can increase fatigue. It can do that for town to I guess, but no break is just difficult when you have to try to fool people nonstop without a break.