Social DGames Social | V/LA |

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

It was gone for half a year and they still found a way to **** it up?

 

[#HBC | Laundry]

they found a way to **** it up by not fixing the problem

kek

 

[ranmaru]

I hear there is finally going to be Dinobots in Transformers 4. FINALLY.

DINOBOTS NO PLAY AROUND

 

[Shun Goku Satsu Rake]

Tyrano-bot cant give hugs though

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Needs more Silverbolt.

 

[Axel]

Acrostic, you clearly never read Zen's reply in the Revolution thread. Furthermore, objectification of the subjective is a means, not an end. A tool, not a product.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

I miss you, but your comment irritates me.

 

[Axel]

http://smashboards.com/threads/dgames-revolution-update-2-2.344622/page-5#post-16126000

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

There are numerous flaws in many of the statements you made, however right now I'm deeply apathetic about the issue and want to sleep.

 

[Axel]

The thing is your #40845 is spot on. I just don't think that Dgames in particular is guilty of it in any form. If it were Epic Mafia, it would certainly apply. However, Dgamers are surely smart enough to take rankings with a grain of salt.

(btw Ranmaru, those weren't really Rankings Zen was doing. More like profiles.)

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

For instance, your use of using team play to discredit the work of an individual winning because an individual cannot win a mafia game without participation from everyone else makes the celebration of the individual unjustifiable is bogus. You are cute in using an analogy like sports i.e. basketball in which individuals like Michael Jordan, Lebron, and Kobe are highlighted for their individual prowess and then contrast that my identifying that mafia is not like a sport because Kobe can still win games with Pau Gasol standing like a pole obstruction on the court. If I've gotten you lost in this analogy, then that's good. Because in the process of getting lost, you realize that mafia isn't a sport because it just isn't analogous to a sport aside from both of them being categorized in very broad terms as being a type of game. What you've discredited is a straw-man that you drew as having similar elements to mafia and then contrasted the two in order to develop your theory of team play in mafia. The second analogy you drew was your comparison to cogs in a machine. There is no one cog that 'wins' a machine. If you remove any cog in that machine, then that machine will either not perform, perform the same, perform badly, or perform better depending on the actual system we are talking about. However, players aren't cogs and the machine isn't a mafia game. The output isn't predicted and the awareness of players can't be compared to processing heat, friction, energy, waste, and efficiency. Using analogies does not add or subtract from your actual argument. It characterizes it, but it does not actually define it.

 

[Axel]

Despite what you think of the analogical supplements, you should still understand why Rankings (Ladder Rankings not such things as tier lists) support team play and better quality of mafia. And why MVP does the opposite.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

The thing is your #40845 is spot on. I just don't think that Dgames in particular is guilty of it in any form. If it were Epic Mafia, it would certainly apply. However, Dgamers are surely smart enough to take rankings with a grain of salt. (btw Ranmaru, those weren't really Rankings Zen was doing. More like profiles.)

Rankings are offensive to me because they are an intrinsically biased metric that highlight what is already identified by the community to be true. Who played well in a given game is dependent on those participating which is riddled with collective bias. Add to that mix an individual trying to be objective putting his bias on how to best interpret the play of a given game with his own impartial stance and interpretation of the events of the game and you have two different types of bias stacked on top of each other. The #1 player on the ladder can fool you, can fool me, can fool Rake, can fool Soup, can fool Ryker, can fool Washed Laundry, can fool EE, can fool marshy, and add in the entirety of the Dgames community. But a ladder system like that just strikes me as being so shallow as if completely missing the underlying game theories that are at work behind a mafia game. Mafia is a combination of luck and a a working exercise of game theory where you can see a little bit of Nash, the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Stable Marriage Problem, and the Tragedy of the Commons which identify the central idea that individuals are solitary systems and getting them to work together as a whole is dependent on the adaptability of the town itself to come together and distinguish who needs to be set apart. Being the best in our community is something to be celebrated. I just feel that having a ladder roster completely misses the underlying spirit of the game. The idea of having a flexible approach while having a firm sense of interpreting actions for their underlying motives with adaptation happening constantly with different players, different communities, and different times. Right now, to the sleep deprived me, that is the ideal mafia player.

 

[Axel]

There is not a single Dgamesian who would look at a ladder and conclude that it determines a person's skill level. We are smarter than that. The ladder wouldn't be about being the best, it would be about being the top. Which is a big difference. You get to the top by winning. You win by playing towards your faction. As town that would be playing to the central idea that individuals are solitary systems and getting them to work together as a whole is dependent on the adaptability of the town itself to come together and distinguish who needs to be set apart.

I guess the only way to settle the matter would be to show you. s'pose there's no use in discussing something that can be shown.

 

[Make it Rain!]

zen pls do you even read the **** that gets posted here sometimes

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

Ahahaha Peyton

 

[ranmaru]

Zen's thing didn't seem like a ranking. It seemed more like individual profiling like he said. I want to see how my own 'profile' of my skill and progress. Doesn't anyone else?

 

[BSL]

Yeah sure why not.

 

[#HBC | Laundry]

Zen's thing didn't seem like a ranking. It seemed more like individual profiling like he said. I want to see how my own 'profile' of my skill and progress. Doesn't anyone else?

I'd rather not let someone arbitrarily rate me from game to game based on my performance, thanks.

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

yeah guys let's treat individual players that aren't a set of programming with limitations like our favorite smash characters

pls ban evil eye, his walls are too op

 

[Jdietz43]

I can't get past Marshy's planking, ban plz

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

I can totally see what Zen is trying to make or do but it's so damn arbitrary and won't have any lasting impact on how players look or treat each other.

@ Axel

I'm guessing you were going for something like this?

Spoiler

Axel: (Win/Loss Town Wins/Scum Wins/Indy Wins)

Discography here of player here

Scumhunting: 3/5
Towntelling: 3/5
Influence: 4/5
Persuasion: 4/5
Scum Play: 4/5

Overall: My Opinion Is Subjective

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I don't know why some people feel the need to categorize stuff, especially something that is based on subjective experience. If anything, one could try to gather certain trademark attributes of a player and try to categorize what "type" of player he is.

 

[ranmaru]

won't have any lasting impact on how players look or treat each other.

Don't care about that. I want something to show my own progress. Like a belt in martial arts. It really feels good to put in that work and to see I have become a yellow belt from a white belt. Now I can't wait for that green belt and I'm going to be practicing.

I don't expect anyone to treat me any differently. That can only be done with results and how can one achieve results without knowing where they stand. Saying "You suck at reads" doesn't tell me where I am with reads.

@ #HBC | Laundry : Then you can ask to be excluded. Is this something that affects games in some way? (I see Acrostic talking about ladders and such)

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Here's an example of what I'm thinking of:

Spoiler

Not necessarily accurate but I think it's much better than any kind of "ranking".

 

[ranmaru]

Hmm, interesting.

 

[#HBC | Dancer]

I don't know why some people feel the need to categorize stuff, especially something that is based on subjective experience. If anything, one could try to gather certain trademark attributes of a player and try to categorize what "type" of player he is.

I don't think there's just "one" reason why people try to categorize things, but from experience I've taken pleasure from it. When I was a kid I use to be super into astrology because I always wanted to know what my horoscope was. Now of course I realize that astrology is total bull hockey but I can see why people might be into this kinda stuff.

@Bold: So . . . meta?

 

[#HBC | Dancer]

Here's an example of what I'm thinking of:

Spoiler

Not necessarily accurate but I think it's much better than any kind of "ranking".

Yooooo, this is actually pretty cool looking. Props Gheb.

 

[BSL]

Astrology is offensive please everyone ignore astrology for all of eternity

 

[Make it Rain!]

no need to be a **** for the sake of being a ****

 

[Nicholas1024]

Some people enjoy rankings for the sake of having a ranking, even if it's not a particularly serious one. The fact that there's a "Power ranking" for the smash scene at my university when everyone involved would get massacred by anyone decent is a good example of that. However, that fact hasn't kept any of us from being amused by them, and I don't think having a "DGamer power ranking" would cause much trouble either. Those who enjoy such things can go nuts over them, and those who see them as a waste of time can simply ignore them. So long as people recognize that they're not to be taken super seriously, I don't think there'd be a problem.

 

[Kantrip]

The problem with that, and the difference between a smash PR and a mafia PR, is that mafia is a team game.

With smash, you can use a number of tournament results or match history between players to determine who can generally beat whom.

With mafia, all you can really go off of is

A) game wins/losses

or

B) subjective criteria that would never work out fairly for everyone without disagreements

I don't really think either of those work, because even for wins/losses, which is at least fair and not subjective, you have issues such as different MODs, different set-ups with players getting different alignments, different players in each game affecting the result, and a number of other factors that are too different from game-to-game to really relate them.

There's just no way a flat-out "ranking" would work. Something like Gheb's proposition, or something where players are described based on their playstyle (so basically outlining their meta in a little profile for each person) would work, but nothing actually ranking us.

 

[ranmaru]

B) subjective criteria that would never work out fairly for everyone without disagreements

Better than nothing. Isn't the same thing when you ask for critique on your play? Except it's a bit more in depth.

It's more like a ballpark guess maybe? I'd rather it be there so I can read it for what it is then have nothing.

Maybe the things like accuracy, readability, persuasion, etc, are hard to garner without some solid sources (their games, that's alot of reading if everyone is to be profiled), so I can see the meta thing as easier to do.

 

[Kantrip]

Better than nothing. Isn't the same thing when you ask for critique on your play? Except it's a bit more in depth.

It's more like a ballpark guess maybe? I'd rather it be there so I can read it for what it is then have nothing.

Maybe the things like accuracy, readability, persuasion, etc, are hard to garner without some solid sources (their games, that's alot of reading if everyone is to be profiled), so I can see the meta thing as easier to do.

It's one thing to critique one person for their play in one game.

It's something else when you try to rank people from best to worst using their performances from a huge sample of games.

 

[ranmaru]

How about just talking about each part of our play then, instead of ranking it with a dot? Look at this:

1.Being correctly read as town. ("Transparency")
2. Having accurate reads. ("Accuracy")
3. Actively working to get your top scumread lynched. ("Rhetoric")
4. Accurately judging which players can be lynched. ("Foresight")
5. Securing the best possible lynch when your top scumread can no longer be lynched ("Pragmatism")

Talk about those 5 things, a little in depth if possible. Same thing but it's not ranking you?

Took this from Hito on Mafiascum. I was searching this forever. Source: On Compromises.

 

[#HBC | marshy]

ghebs **** is cool as ****

 

[#HBC | Laundry]

Better than nothing. Isn't the same thing when you ask for critique on your play? Except it's a bit more in depth.

It's more like a ballpark guess maybe? I'd rather it be there so I can read it for what it is then have nothing.

Maybe the things like accuracy, readability, persuasion, etc, are hard to garner without some solid sources (their games, that's alot of reading if everyone is to be profiled), so I can see the meta thing as easier to do.

There's a difference between getting ranked and asking for a critique. The latter is asking for pointers on how to improve your play, the former is trying to judge you in comparison to the rest of your peers on arbitrary, subjective, and often shifting facets of your play. Critiques help you get better. Ranking doesn't do much except cause cockfights and fail to really paint a solid picture of a player's real skill because a player is very capable of bad games or limited impact due to decisions and influence from other alignments. If I got NK'd N1 every game for like the next ten games, would that give you a solid grasp on how good I am as a player? How would you reflect that in the rankings?

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I still get to be Roy tier right?

 

[#HBC | Laundry]

No you get to be Ruy tier.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Glad yall **** enjoy the chart I've made. If you want I can make a bigger, more refined and more accurate version of it though I'd prolly need help for it then.

Some people enjoy rankings for the sake of having a ranking, even if it's not a particularly serious one. The fact that there's a "Power ranking" for the smash scene at my university when everyone involved would get massacred by anyone decent is a good example of that. However, that fact hasn't kept any of us from being amused by them, and I don't think having a "DGamer power ranking" would cause much trouble either. Those who enjoy such things can go nuts over them, and those who see them as a waste of time can simply ignore them. So long as people recognize that they're not to be taken super seriously, I don't think there'd be a problem.

Nobody said it would be a "problem". It would be absolutely useless though so why bother?