Newbie Data

[Elmo]

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

idk. My position is that the data strongly suggests Town lynches marginally better than random in a F11 game without power roles. Given scum can fakeclaim, scum have to worry about docs when NKing, scum have to worry about being investigated, etc, I don't really draw any conclusions about pure vanilla games from it.

In the general sense I would not be shocked if the balance effect of scumhunting was seriously overrated by most people, tho.

[Mr. Flay]

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

This is a statement that bothers me somewhat so I want to ask about it.

I think we are much worse at 'scumhunting' than we think we are (people like to claim absurdly high accuracy rates, when in truth most "good" players get maybe 5-10% better than random). I also think it's easier overall to scumhunt in larger games, like nhammen says. The lynches can make smaller games extremely swingy; look at the first post for perfect examples. In a bigger game, you get more 'misses', and it comes down to that 5-10% skill, more than random chance.

[Vi]

I'll grant that C9s aren't newbie-friendly IMO.

I'm not sure what to say about the site's overall scumhunting rate tbqh but I'm not opposed to saying it's overrated, especially in newbie games.

[Netopalis]

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

This is a statement that bothers me somewhat so I want to ask about it.

I think we are much worse at 'scumhunting' than we think we are (people like to claim absurdly high accuracy rates, when in truth most "good" players get maybe 5-10% better than random). I also think it's easier overall to scumhunt in larger games, like nhammen says. The lynches can make smaller games extremely swingy; look at the first post for perfect examples. In a bigger game, you get more 'misses', and it comes down to that 5-10% skill, more than random chance.

An interesting idea might be to see how individual players do at scumhunting vs. towns. I wonder if perhaps something in the debate process is hurting our success rates. Perhaps we could run a test where we survey players in between day/night phases and see where their head is at, and how accurate each individual is vs. the crowd.

[Vi]

Counterpoint: Mr. Flay's position seems to be that without power roles Towns are successful at finding scum more through blind luck than hunting. (Is that right?)

This is a statement that bothers me somewhat so I want to ask about it.

I think we are much worse at 'scumhunting' than we think we are (people like to claim absurdly high accuracy rates, when in truth most "good" players get maybe 5-10% better than random). I also think it's easier overall to scumhunt in larger games, like nhammen says. The lynches can make smaller games extremely swingy; look at the first post for perfect examples. In a bigger game, you get more 'misses', and it comes down to that 5-10% skill, more than random chance.

An interesting idea might be to see how individual players do at scumhunting vs. towns. I wonder if perhaps something in the debate process is hurting our success rates. Perhaps we could run a test where we survey players in between day/night phases and see where their head is at, and how accurate each individual is vs. the crowd.

There's no "I" in "team", but there IS one in "Vig".

The question then becomes how you measure individual scumhunting.
The SWA I keep on my wiki (stolen from Mr. Flay) isn't really perfect tbh - I have to compromise for lynches even if I don't like them, or I think someone is scum but can't get them lynched, etc.

[Mr. Flay]

Argh; that reminds me that I desperately need to fix my SWA. I did something wrong when I calculated it the first time, then ran out of time to fix it...

[Elmo]

I wonder if perhaps something in the debate process is hurting our success rates.

There are things in the meta that are absolutely poisonous but meh that should be fairly obvious.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of running what would amount to a semi-hidden prediction market for mafia games. Prolly wouldn't work out tho.

[zoraster]

Well, part of being a good scum hunter is convincing the town you're right, presumably. But I'd be willing to buy that very few people are able to be more than marginally better than random over a long period of time. Isn't this something Adel feels strongly about?

[Elmo]

Well, there's a combination of factors.

1. Unless they have been specifically trained, most people are bad at providing an accurate probability (i.e. 95% likely) even when they have a clear view of the actual likelihood of an event.
2. Almost no-one keeps a written, objective track of their beliefs as the game progresses; memory biases are well known.
3. The vast majority of players perform little or no post-game analysis ("lessons learned").
4. There is a significant amount of variance in Mafia which complicates any kind of analysis; the correct long-term decision can result in a local failure, and it's rare that someone plays enough games
5. It is extremely difficult to assign blame (as in causative effect) between someone acting suspicious and someone suspecting them. People who were objectively wrong to suspect someone have a pronounced tenancy to place 100% of the blame on them.

off the top of my head. What I mean is that when we do something like balance a setup, we are required to put a number on the benefit people can gain from scumhunting in that setup, and I feel this number is, in general, poorly justified at best; you may remember the statistics that towns were getting crushed in Large Games a while ago.

That said, although the majority of players probably overestimate themselves, I'd be pretty confidant most competent players do better than random over the long-term, and some players very significantly so.