What is the purpose of mass claiming?

[Shiryu]

To me (and this is just newbie talk here), it is in everyones interest to just claim townie: Regular townies risk major suspicion by pretending to be something they're not, as well as mafia. As for the doctor and cop, well they'd just get themselved killed. Does order have something to do with it? Or maybe it's just that I've only played newbie games and it helps out more in the bigger leagues?

[shelper]

Mass claiming is almost exclusively used in themed games, where there are clear-cut bad guy roles, so the bad guys have two choices:

A. claim a normal good guy role, and risk getting counter-claimed.
B. claim an obscure role that isn't likely to be found in that game.

It's hard to find a good balance between the two.

[Dasquian]

Well, if you're the cop and it looks like you're a good candidate for a lynch, it's in the town's interests for you to actually claim cop. That way you can share your results and get doc protection, and at the very least stop the town wasting a lynch on a guaranteed innocent (yourself!) and force the mafia to use a kill on taking you out.

So it's normally not in your interests to dumb down your claim; being truthful may in fact help shed suspicion you've acquired, and will also make the other townies' jobs easier. Of course, until forced to claim anything I agree it's best to act as though you're just a townie, but when forced to claim you should be truthful.

Newbie games (the 2 mafia, 1 cop, 1 doc, 3 townie setup) are different because they're so tight and known to everyone so a whole load of game theory comes in. I think in that situation you should claim doc/cop if you are the doc/cop simply to establish your own innocence and stopping the mafia getting a safe claim.

[Coron]

Mass claim is extremely useful in end games. There tend to be certain types of roles mafia tend to claim, similar roles that can verify eachother, roles that might provide false information without knowlege of another, many many more important thing too.

[Yosarian2]

Mass claiming is almost exclusively used in themed games, where there are clear-cut bad guy roles, so the bad guys have two choices:

A. claim a normal good guy role, and risk getting counter-claimed.
B. claim an obscure role that isn't likely to be found in that game.

It's hard to find a good balance between the two.

This can be a real problem game balance wise, making it very hard for scum to win theame games, so a lot of Mods will put in things to make a mass claim less clear; either give GG's improbable roles or roles that sound like bad guys, or give the bad guys some idea of what roles they can safely claim, or have some game mechanic that makes it dangerous to claim too early, or in a few cases just outright forbid role claims at all.

[Dasquian]

I agree - a well-crafted theme game should make the early mass-claim more useful for scum than town.