Replace Outs

[Eddie Cane]

Replace outs are the single biggest issues with site meta. They actively ruin games.

1) They are instantly town sided. If a town replaces out, you instantly get a fresh perspective on the game. If either alignment replaces out, you now have twice as many opportunities to sort that slot's alignment.

2) They... ruin games. Don't really know how to sugar coat it. As scum, your job is to manipulate the players in the game, not every conceivable player.

3) The fresh perspective on the game point is pretty major. I don't think people understand how big of a difference this really makes, joining a game late without being worn out or having been manipulated.

On top of all of this, replacing out is just anti-competitive. Scum slots replace out way above rand because people generally don't like scum. Aside from this, if you sign up for a game, that should be because you intend to play it. If you are replacing out due to toxicity, sucks, part of the game - and maybe a different site culture issue to target. The only times you should be replacing out of a game is due to a real-life emergency, or, for your mental health. And in the latter case, if you are replacing out for that reason you should not be joining any more games for a substantial time period. The prod deadlines on this site are 48h+ (the day length on most sites) and you are allowed to declare V/LA.

Suggestion #1: shift the community outlook on replacing out to very very bad. Site culture switch. Do not let people join games that regularly replace from games. This does not require a punishment system.
Suggestion #2: track replace outs, and punish people who do it for non-documented reasons multiple times. A temporary ban on joining new games for a time period is good. If you want to allow redemption, let replacing

into

a game and playing it to completion, or maybe even mod a game to completion, count as community service hours or what have you.

[Comical]

As scum, your job is to manipulate the players in the game, not every conceivable player.

Speak it, sister.

[Something_Smart]

I would maybe be interested in something like this. As a player who has never replaced out except when my slot's been compromised, I feel like the site culture is pretty lax on allowing people to nope out of their commitments because they don't feel like playing.

The only time I've seen a moderator actually try to combat this, aside from the Bad at Mafia ruleset which significantly changes the game by modkilling inactive slots, is Kmd's activity rule, which rejects /ins from players who have flaked out of a game in the last year and permanently blacklists any players who flake out of his game.

I like that idea but it would only really carry weight as a deterrent if a sizable proportion of mods agree to adopt it. And since it's unfair for such a thing to be retroactive, it would require a dedicated group of moderators to get together and say "from this time onward, anyone who flakes out of a game will be blacklisted from all games modded by us for X length of time." That's pretty impractical but in theory it could work and if adopted widely would probably decrease replacement rate significantly, especially among highly active players.

There are other reasons to replace than just flaking, of course. Replacing due to OGI or rule-breaking is of course unavoidable. Replacing due to lack of motivation or being overgamed can probably be treated the same as flaking. Replacing due to toxicity is tricky, but I feel like the best solution is to privately identify the person whose toxicity is the reason you are replacing when you replace, and then postgame it will be publicly revealed and you and that player will not be allowed to play together in the future. This is another thing that could theoretically be enforced by a moderator society dedicated to combating replacements.

[Kerset]

If we punish players for replacing then they are going to make prod dodges and destroy their game even more. Forcing people to play something that they don't want to play is even worse then replacement.

[Eddie Cane]

since it's unfair for such a thing to be retroactive

Definitely agree it should not be retroactive.

Replacing due to OGI or rule-breaking is of course unavoidable.

Goes without saying, but yea, this is another exception (and of course, rule breaking is already punished).

If we punish players for replacing then they are going to make prod dodges and destroy their game even more. Forcing people to play something that they don't want to play is even worse then replacement.

That's kind of the point though? I'd argue very strongly its better to have somebody prod dodge the whole game rather than replace out. That's the kind of player that should not be joining games in the first place. If this is really a thing that happens (I would hope it won't) then subjective punishment from a list mod is fine because arguably that's not playing to your win condition. There's players like Yume who prod dodge almost the entirety of most games that they don't outright flake from, and this system would not create new players doing that, but instead punish those chronic prodgers (because sometimes they get force replaced which would still be a strike).

[Ellibereth]

[Alyssa The Lamb]

I like that idea but it would only really carry weight as a deterrent if a sizable proportion of mods agree to adopt it. And since it's unfair for such a thing to be retroactive, it would require a dedicated group of moderators to get together and say "from this time onward, anyone who flakes out of a game will be blacklisted from all games modded by us for X length of time." That's pretty impractical but in theory it could work and if adopted widely would probably decrease replacement rate significantly, especially among highly active players.

I really feel like this would be more likely to kill the site depending on the amount and identity of mods that started using this

this kind of thing would be best paired with some way to attract new players to the site in general because the amount of people that play on the site has dwindled enough that adding a whole bunch of restrictions from something like this would just make it harder for games to get filled at all, and the retention rate of new players isn't high enough to really justify it

[Eddie Cane]

An easy way to attract new players? In addition to the currently paced games, which I believe is part of this site's niche, offer games at a normal pace, ie something like 72/24 cycles vs 240/48. It is not a whole bunch of new restrictions, just if you flake out from x games you're banned from new games for y time. Make it 2 or 3 replace outs for unapproved reasons (not because of OGI, real-life emergency) in a year. Refresh them from someone's record after a year. It doesn't need to be overly restrictive. This accounts for having to sub out due to toxicity, too. And if you are having to sub out more often than that, there's clearly a problem. Mafia in other places is not dying, most places I know of are growing.

[Alyssa The Lamb]

what do other sites generally feel about MS nowadays?

[Eddie Cane]

I'm a bad person to ask, I haven't played on most regularly for over a year now. Maybe someone'll chime in.

[popsofctown]

You should treat a game like a commitment, to the point where even if you become so disinterested it's like reading three encyclopedia articles and transcribing the third one once a day, you should finish your game.

Toxic players can easily pull the displeasure of participation below that baseline. When that's the case, it's the toxic player that needs to be addressed.

With Robbnva having participated in 999999 games before he was removed from the playerbase indefinitely, it seems very hard to assert that bans alone are a good fit for that issue, with the criteria they currently have.

[RadiantCowbells]

As far as I know our reputation among other sites is for 3 thing

1) Long day phases
2) High tolerance for AtE as a strategy in games
3) having good scum players (blame Maria and FA)

[popsofctown]

And in the latter case, if you are replacing out for that reason you should not be joining any more games for a substantial time period.

In 90% of cases the toxic player is the one who should not have been joining any more games for a substantial time period. The identity of the replace-outs is more varied than the identity of the push-outs, so this is obvious. It seems like it requires willful naivety to reach this conclusion.

[Ircher]

I would like to point out that toxicity tends to be a two-way street, regardless of who started it. A number of players who replace out due to toxicity were being toxic themselves.

As to this thread's topic, while I agree replace-outs can be issue, they're a necessary evil, and I don't think this is the right approach to be taking against them.

[popsofctown]

I would like to point out that toxicity tends to be a two-way street, regardless of who started it. A number of players who replace out due to toxicity were being toxic themselves.

As to this thread's topic, while I agree replace-outs can be issue, they're a necessary evil, and I don't think this is the right approach to be taking against them.

It's an observable phenomenon that the players who cause others to replace out based on conflict are more likely to replace out of games based on conflict themselves. The tension escalation element may be why. I've tended to guess it's because there are personality elements that are co-indicators but your paradigm might be more accurate.

[popsofctown]

I agree that 12 shouldn't be read to mean the player who replaced out is exclusively the one who wasn't toxic. There's occasionally cases where the toxicity is one-sided and clear though.

[Eddie Cane]

I agree with a lot of what you've said Pops. Clarifying one point, this is why there

should

be a buffer, hence my suggestion of only punishing after 2 or 3 nonessential replacements in a set time period, not 1. If there is an anomalous situation with someone being a douchcanoe or another thing, its not saying you are paroled to a game once you sign up. Its just about generally committing to a game you signed up to play.

[RadiantCowbells]

I have weird feelings about us going down the flake moderator line like MafiaUniverse did, heh

[Eddie Cane]

I don't really follow MU, mind tldring what they did and how well it worked?

[RadiantCowbells]

They have specific moderators whose only job is to step in on people flaking too much esp. as one alignment (scum) because MU had such an issue with people rolling scum and gtfoing

[Eddie Cane]

Subjectively, did that do anything positive or negative? Or not really make a difference

[RadiantCowbells]

I have no idea I'm not immersed enough in the MU meta ask MariaR or something.

I do know they have an acronym RWSTFO (rand wolf sub the fuck out)

[Eddie Cane]

Heard that in all 3 games I've played there, yea. I think I saw a post listing the stats of mafia and town rep outs on this site and it was around 70% mafia? Maybe remembering wrong. I do think a strike system to give a small bit of leeway is better than a mod system, personally.

[RadiantCowbells]

Yes it's pretty obscene but I think part of that was MU developed this weird meta where 1) AtE was tolerated as town but not scum 2).A very significant portion of playerlists (3-4 players in a 13p) straight up had creature NSG style no scum range and were either free lunches or free conftowns and 3) people rarely replaced out except to preserve winrate ime. Every replace out I saw in MU despite rules against it had the replacees attempting to talk around the rules against it to argue it spewed them town and the top end quality of MU scum players was upsettingly low so no one really had counterplay to it.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I don’t know or should think the policy on replace outs should be changed or not but MS should definitely crack down more on flaking. Any player who repeatedly flakes and wastes a slot, is being irresponsible. Either play, go v/la or replace out but don’t fucking flake. That kills games.