Fire Emblem: Awakening Mafia | GAME OVER: Not Equal To The Challenge

[Dastrn]

Maybe if you hadn't almost lost the game single-handedly...

rofl

We should disengage now. You're fooling yourself.

But we should wait until AFTER you tell us your age, so I can tell you if I lost the bet or not.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Gosh dam you man. Why did you separate?? Do you think you would have done so had I not mentioned my reasoning for not pairing with Ran (the person in front is in control)?

Not a bad game. I just wish you'd be more assertive and less passive. If you think someone is town, you don't let them die :/. I feel like sometimes you don't take action because of the repercussions of being wrong maybe. You give your thoughts but you never really push, you stay really close to the fence. I think you just gotta realize that stuff isn't going to happen unless you make it happen.

I was definitely not going to switch with you (lose my action), and I wanted you to be in the firing line for D3, and still have my action then. I guess what prompted it was that I felt confident you were being opportunistic scum when you came in to defend FML (who I was confident was scum).

marshy gave me some advice a while back which was that strong players aren't afraid to lead and be wrong. I think that kinda is my problem, so you're right, but I had a real confusing time this game with all the love going around. RR liked FML and dabuz, Kanty liked Sokr, Xast liked you. I felt like there was no obvious thing to be pursued so I kinda stalled.

Anyways, well played. I don't know whether D3 would have treated you as well, but credit to you all the same.

 

[Raziek]

ALRIGHT TIME OUT CHILDREN.

No more insults back and forth, cool off, gentlemen.

Sleep the salt off.

 

[Sokr]

Yo, Kary. Xastrn. Shut up. The game's over so there's no point bickering. Yes you have differing opinions. Not everyone can get along. Just recognize that and try to be mature about it. The rest of us don't want to hear it.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

rofl

We should disengage now. You're fooling yourself.

But we should wait until AFTER you tell us your age, so I can tell you if I lost the bet or not.

You shot soup and could easily have died in the backlash.

sad but true.

 

[Sokr]

We had a plan for that

Impossible. My plan was flawless.

But actually, what was it? I enjoy hearing your guys' plans.

 

[Raziek]

Please guys, I don't want to have to take any official action as a mod. If nothing else, you need to at least leave it out of the thread.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Nobody needs your endearment. We want to play a game. But if you're going to just be a tornado of swearing, ALL CAPS, name-calling, and tunneling, then no, you shouldn't expect people to judge your online persona any differently than the way you're being described.

Were you the person I asked about his age? Settle a bet for me. I had someone outside this game read along and I want to see which of us is right. We set an over-under. I won't tell you what side of the line I took.

I told you not to be condescending. Please work on that for me.

 

[Dastrn]

I'm not salty. And I agree that disengaging is best.

It's unfortunate that there are players that we can't talk strategy and reason with without everything falling apart, but it is what it is. I won't lose any sleep over it.

@Zen Hydra next game?

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Please guys, I don't want to have to take any official action as a mod. If nothing else, you need to at least leave it out of the thread.

I'm done. Not a peep more out of me. Maybe one day this'll be funny in hindsight.

 

[Dastrn]

I told you not to be condescending. Please work on that for me.

*moderately loud siiiiiigh*

 

[Dastrn]

@Kary, let's give it a little while and then hydra together. I think we could actually be good together if we could argue in private instead of being forced to do it in public. You can pick my brain and see why I work the way I do, and likewise the other way around.

 

[Orboknown]

@Sokr
Zen was going to pair behind you

 

[Sokr]

Dammit. So much for flawless.

 

[Shun Goku Satsu Rake]

i think we can all agree, the real winner here is the american justice system, and the pursuit of dreams greater than ourselves.

 

[Kantrip]

@Sokr
Zen was going to pair behind you

So it would have been a race, interesting.

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

4. Rage less (omg soup, sorry but I might honestly just avoid games if you're in them. that might have been the difference between a win and a loss, all in one rampage.)

This is still bothering me. Xastrn/Dastrn. I don't dislike you. I don't even think you did that bad. However, if you're going to determine my worth as a player based on one outburst, I wouldn't really care if I missed a game with you. I don't understand why you feel the need to shove **** in my face like I'm some kind of dog. It's very belittling and you give off a holier-than-thou attitude that isn't justified in your predicament. You treat me like I don't know how to play this game. You treat me like what I did was the absolute deciding factor of the loss. You treat me like I am some nonredeemable mess of a player who has to be graced by your holy mafia presence. I know how to play this game and I would really respect if you lay off on me about what happened. I admit my mistake but for you just to keep drilling and pointing it out is bothering me to no end. I remember reading the thread and you literally would not ****ing shut up about how I died. You kept berating me and the irony of it is that I wouldn't have been in that predicament had you not shot me. I think it's one thing to make a point, and it's another to attack people with it. You are not being insightful or productive but shoving your opinions down peoples throats without considering others. That's what I did dislike about you this whole game. You absolutely refused to have a common ground with people and you went out of your way to pick fights. That is not being townie, that is being a jackass. Your attitude leaves me on a sour note.

 

[Sokr]

of course, orbo, there is always the chance that i would be eagerly hovering on this thread awaiting circus to reopen it. I actually wish d3 had happened just to see what would have happened

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

I'm not salty. And I agree that disengaging is best.

It's unfortunate that there are players that we can't talk strategy and reason with without everything falling apart, but it is what it is. I won't lose any sleep over it.

@Zen Hydra next game?

How can you say you're not salty but then add a comment like that below, it completely contradicts what you're doing and what you're trying to say.

 

[Kantrip]

Guys just drop it.

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

I have a right to talk back when I am being talked back to. While it's true that being the 'better man' is a ideal solution, I will not sit here and not defend myself on poorly made assumptions of my character.

 

[ranmaru]

Ranmaru: ugh, our reads were very good at the beginning, shame we died Was great hydra'ing with you, let me know if you want to bring the Death Mountain to a game again

Yeah it happens. Maybe next time. :D It was fun bro!

@Ran: I don't really like your style of play in general. You've said in the signup thread (and proven both here and in Walmart) that you think tunneling one player relentlessly is a great strategy. Having read Walmart, however, I've seen how that works out when your target is town. I was very disinclined to trust your case against dabuz because of this. I personally had a town-read on you up until you welcomed Rajam into the game and then let him play 10 pages behind the rest of the game. At that point I just thought your play was just ridiculous. Still would easily have preferred FML die rather than you, though.

Then it's your problem for letting my style blind you from seeing the truth. (IE, the underlined). Like you didn't even NEED to iso that guy, you could have looked at my reasoning "I think he's using filler questions to look like he is doing something". Look, there he was, not doing **** at ALL. Rarely did he ever COMMENT on recent events as he should have. Sure, I tunnel. But it doesn't mean that everytime I tunnel, that it'll be town. You have to look at it from a neutral lens, set your disagreement aside for a while.

I don't see how Rajam replacing in is telling at all. Maybe to you without meta, but Rajam was taking the time to analyze everything, which I liked.

Just check this hydra qt (which was at first a note qt for myself, but it turned into that): http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/Mst9RgzuRV76W

See the difference? Replacing in is no joke.

My style will likely always be a bit mechanical. I will always harp on inactives, because they coast to scum victories too often. I'd rather kill an inactive day 1 then be stuck with them day 3 still being inactive and clogging up the game.

Killing inactives is fine but I'd rather go for FOR SURE SCUM d1 and maybe an inactive d2. I like activity but I like finding scum too.

The problem we were faced with this game was that whenever we turned to logic, everyone told us we were stupid to do so and ignored what we had to say. That was the one unifying problem we saw with town the entire game. Logic is a useful tool that town deprived themselves of in favor gut feels and meta. We were perfectly ready to accept when we were wrong, but no one took the time to actually respond in a way that had any chance of convincing us that we were. Rather than respond with a rational argument, most people just told us off for trying to use logic in the first place. We ended up spending more time defending our playstyle this game than actually playing the game itself.

The fact of the matter is, town needs a variety of playstyles in order to be successful. Two years ago, the best town games came from having aggressive, charismatic town leaders (like Cello) combined with slower, more logical players like Dastrn and I. The charismatic players would often have bad reads, but they were active enough and aggressive enough that they got everyone talking and kept scum from hiding perfectly. The logical players then had all the tools they needed to sift through the data and find scum. This is exactly how town won Oddworld (Cello slowing down at Xastrn/EP's request), and exactly how they lost FF6 (Cello refusing to slow down at my own).

Town was more of a mob than a team, which allowed scum to hide a lot more easily than they should have been able to.

I think Soup could play that part, actually. He gave some good thoughts, he saw through Dabuz as well early D1. He's the type to be a bit background and give those occasional thoughts and reads.

Maybe we could talk about playstyles and what other strategies like (slowing down) could help town instead of all of us trying to push push push.

[collapse=Ran with a bit of jam]You and your accurate reads -_-. Seriously with the skimming though? You weren't paying attention to so much stuff. Especially with regards to the mechanics and set up of the game. That came to my advantage in the end. I was so glad when Rajam took me off the scum list. I thought for sure you guys would come after me once you saw how hard I was pushing you. I was just hoping that the results of walmart mafia would hold you back. FML being "obvtown" is the only thing that threw you off. Had he not achieved that you probably would have had the entire scum team down.

@rajam: just saying you were scum reading me due to me not being hyperactive. That doesn't necessarily indicate me as scum. I posted that walmart game for you for that reason. I was scum read there because I was trying to be more level headed than hyperactive.[/collapse]

... >_> <_< >_> I always do that when catching up so I can get into the game as quickly as possible. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ I don't think it's telling because I'm trying to replace in. I dunno, I'm just lazy. And look, I got reads on you after. So did skimming really affect anything? Ok maybe I should try to do it less, j told me, but for now it's just a null. :3 Maybe me leaving my raz read wasn't good. Yolo. I might not do it again. I was also just trying to quick paste it all because I did it during the night.

Maybe next time I'll just make everyone wait if I replace in.

Also I think it's better you be hyperactive or at LEAST proactive as town so I can frickin read you. I don't know if you are trying to be scum trying to be null or a pr trying to be null but plz let me read you as town when you are town so we can wreck scum. k thx.

 

[ranmaru]

Also btw zen next time you are town you better give a read on me like after I give enough content to read by or I'll just ask you and you better give it then and there before I doubt you

but then walmart mafia... damn it.

Just know that I won't let walmart mafia stop me from looking at you if you keep a null on me for very long. I can see how you didn't get reads so I don't want you trying something like that chess thing but instead doing your usual town stick, that WORKS and it gets you reads.

:D

 

[Dastrn]

This is still bothering me. Xastrn/Dastrn. I don't dislike you. I don't even think you did that bad. However, if you're going to determine my worth as a player based on one outburst, I wouldn't really care if I missed a game with you. I don't understand why you feel the need to shove **** in my face like I'm some kind of dog. It's very belittling and you give off a holier-than-thou attitude that isn't justified in your predicament. You treat me like I don't know how to play this game. You treat me like what I did was the absolute deciding factor of the loss. You treat me like I am some nonredeemable mess of a player who has to be graced by your holy mafia presence. I know how to play this game and I would really respect if you lay off on me about what happened. I admit my mistake but for you just to keep drilling and pointing it out is bothering me to no end. I remember reading the thread and you literally would not ****ing shut up about how I died. You kept berating me and the irony of it is that I wouldn't have been in that predicament had you not shot me. I think it's one thing to make a point, and it's another to attack people with it. You are not being insightful or productive but shoving your opinions down peoples throats without considering others. That's what I did dislike about you this whole game. You absolutely refused to have a common ground with people and you went out of your way to pick fights. That is not being townie, that is being a *******. Your attitude leaves me on a sour note.

I apologize if I came across that way. I didn't mean to belittle you as badly as I apparently did.

Here's what's up:

We came under heavy fire from 2 or 3 townies, AND scum because of the shot we took on you. We felt like if you had not had your outburst, you very well may not have died. There was more time D1 and it wasn't as if you would have absolutely died before you started to fall apart. I'm sorry to hear that some real life stuff was stressing you out and led to part of that frustration.

The thing is, we HAD to point out how scummy you were acting specifically BECAUSE of the heat we were getting. We ended up in mylo after a single mislynch day one, which we'll talk to Circus about whenever it makes sense to have the conversation. The heat for all of that came down on us and we HAD to defend ourselves. Our motivations were pro-town. If we didn't play up your poor behavior day 1, then we were dead in the water. Your behavior, in our opinion, HAD to be the focus because it was the only thing that kept us alive when people were bickering over how to shoot us and whose weapon would be used and whatnot. Nevermind that we actually made a pretty good case against you and had a lot of town on our side when the lynch was building up. None of that mattered to scum, of course, and it clearly didn't matter to RR or Kary, who wanted us dead ASAP D2 all because of the mislynch.

To be fair though, (addressing your bold text), you WERE in that predicament UNTIL we shot you. We ended the predicament with our shot. We were stuck in OUR predicament then, BECAUSE of your play. Had you not exploded, we would have saved our shot, and it appears Raziek would have shot you. We would have been under significantly less fire and D2 might have been salvageable, although it sounds like we likely were in mylo for the entire rest of the game from there, debately, considering perhaps, that we would still have had a weapon to use D3 and might have been able to prolong the game 1 more day.

I've been in such a habit of demonizing your play as a method of self-preservation in the game. Yes, I think it was a ****ty way to play, and you demonstrated that you didn't even understand the rules of the game by trying to take 3 actions in one day, and I'll call it bad if it was bad.

Your point is that you don't need to hear it. You know it, and I'm making it even worse. You're right, and I apologize. I let my game talk carry over into my post-game talk. If I ever reference it again in D-Games, it will only be in terms of meta, and hopefully, it'll be an encouragement to not go all Fire-Emblem on us.

No worries, man. I'm sorry for letting my language carry over to post-game. In game, it was sort of necessary.

To be fair, NO ONE caught as much **** during or after this game as I have, and most of it was because of honest pro-town motivated play. My problem is that I wrapped that play in a wrapper that irritated people. You guys all know each other better than I do. I'm basically an outsider coming into a group that plays together frequently enough to know each other fairly well, and when I appear brash, it doesn't carry with it the comradery that another player might be able to muster.

tl;dr I'm sorry.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

rofl

We should disengage now. You're fooling yourself.

But we should wait until AFTER you tell us your age, so I can tell you if I lost the bet or not.

Shot Soup after making stance not to shoot him.

Town reads 2/3 scum and demands we don't shoot them.

Get over yourself.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I don't mind the back and forth if people stay more civil about it though.

 

[Xivii]

@Dastrn: I'm taking a break after GS3. Next game I'm in for sure if you're around.

There was definitely nothing wrong with the safe claim.

-I couldn't actually use beaststones, and there weren't any in the game. If I claimed too early, I could have been forced to show that I had them, or rather that I didn't have them.
-Scum couldn't kill so if town forced their scum reads to make the kill and I happened to be the choice on an even day it would disprove the claim.

I think you guys made a prediction before the game started and ended up falling into confirmation bias and circular logic. As has been said, no one else bought into it even once they gained a town read on you. The only way you should have 99% trusted me is if I had proven that I had beaststones. Even then it would've been possible that I was given beaststones at the start. It would've even been possible that the mod made Yarne scum despite him being a protagonist in the actual game. Claims are never an excuse not to lynch someone scummy no matter how much sense the claim makes.

@Zen: Can I request some actual critique from you, rather than just the trolling? xD

Coming into the game I was expecting you to be behind in activity. I've never really gotten to see how you play when you're into the game so I was surprised here. Your play was pretty darn solid up until the soup attack. When reading your posts D1 I found myself forgetting that I was scum for a second, nodding my head along to everything you were saying. You're right that if you weren't in front of Ryker, you probably wouldn't have been killed N1. But say Ryker had claimed some sort of BP, you likely would have been second choice. You and Ryker together is just ugh. I would have been satisfied if for some reason the second kill on Ryker didn't go through.

Hopefully we can actually be allies sometime.

 

[Raziek]

Coming into the game I was expecting you to be behind in activity. I've never really gotten to see how you play when you're into the game so I was surprised here. Your play was pretty darn solid up until the soup attack. When reading your posts D1 I found myself forgetting that I was scum for a second, nodding my head along to everything you were saying. You're right that if you weren't in front of Ryker, you probably wouldn't have been killed N1. But say Ryker had claimed some sort of BP, you likely would have been second choice. You and Ryker together is just ugh. I would have been satisfied if for some reason the second kill on Ryker didn't go through.

Hopefully we can actually be allies sometime.

Thanks, I really appreciate it. :D

The bolded especially made me smile.

As for Ryker/Raz team, it just tends to naturally happen sometimes since we've hydra'd enough to be able to read each other pretty well.

 

[Xivii]

w.r.t setup, any game where everyone is given a gun will ALWAYS be swingy. They don't call it Bad Idea Mafia for nothin'. It's all a matter of how well town can cooperate vs how well scum can make that not happen. Also I think that people have to realize that when playing a game with completely new mechanics, that's going to be a huge part of the game. And you need to start from scratch with regards to how you're going to go about the game. For instance in mafia, set up speculation can burn you hard, but in this game it was a huge advantage. As I said, dabuz figured out the set up by night 1. I think this is the single greatest advantage we were given. Figuring that out sets a player up to start playing towards reducing kill potential (weapons and support position) rather than simply reducing the opposing faction. Kantrip figured out the setup a third of the way into D2 (I think), and you saw from there how he was pushing to get his scum picks to shoot his scum picks where everyone else at the time was just playing for their picks to get shot, no matter who it was by.

I also, without a doubt, think that playing to the mechanics and set up is why scum won. I really think that no matter how Towny the mafia looked, it would have been really hard to win without playing to the set up and mechanics.

-If scum let 2-3 sets of town pairs live through a day and night, they're likely screwed.
-If scum let's the sword users live, free to use their weapons and abilities they're likely screwed. I will say that it's incredible luck that we hit all three of the sword users.
-If scum puts themselves in a position where they need to shoot they're likely screwed.
-If scum kills people who have already used their weapon or targets people who have already used the weapon as the day kill, then the game would run longer than needed.
-If all the scum with usable weapons end up in support, then there will be no night kill.


We avoided all of these things, and town didn't capitalize on them. That's really all there is to it. It wasn't a matter of the town players not being good at mafia because a lot of players had good to really good reads; and it wasn't a matter of a faulty setup. It was a matter of town not playing this particular set up correctly. And scum NOT not playing this particular set up correctly.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Good night one, by the way.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

rofl We should disengage now. You're fooling yourself. But we should wait until AFTER you tell us your age, so I can tell you if I lost the bet or not.

Don't use this pick-up line ever again.

Nobody needs your endearment. We want to play a game.

The Saw pick up line is also no good. I've used it before.

The fact of the matter is, town needs a variety of playstyles in order to be successful. Two years ago, the best town games came from having aggressive, charismatic town leaders (like Cello) combined with slower, more logical players like Dastrn and I. The charismatic players would often have bad reads, but they were active enough and aggressive enough that they got everyone talking and kept scum from hiding perfectly. The logical players then had all the tools they needed to sift through the data and find scum. This is exactly how town won Oddworld (Cello slowing down at Xastrn/EP's request), and exactly how they lost FF6 (Cello refusing to slow down at my own).

So basically you need Cello in every game for your logical approach to be optimized properly. However based on your text it appears that you weren't aware Cello was in this game. Either that or you chose to approach the game logically even though you were aware Cello wasn't in the town. Either that or you chose to approach the game logically even though you became aware that it wasn't working with the town.

Yes the problem appears that everyone is concerned about themselves. If only some people could experiment with an alternative game play style in order to fit better in better with the town, then it is possible that town could gel better as a whole. It's not town's fault they lost though. I was pretty sure Cello was going to replace into a town slot on page 40 and was surprised he didn't come in as reinforcement.

 

[ranmaru]

Oh yeah I should refrain from just seeing walls or something and going 'yeah prolly town rake'. Ugh, walls. But yeah I'll try to look over what Rake was doing this game someday, when I have time.

 

[Xatres]

The fact of the matter is, town needs a variety of playstyles in order to be successful.

Thesis.

Two years ago, the best town games came from having aggressive, charismatic town leaders (like Cello) combined with slower, more logical players like Dastrn and I.

Example.

One of the biggest PROBLEMS of two years ago was exactly what you seem to be assuming I'm thinking. Town very often thought they couldn't win without a Cello-like player in the game. It caused people to blindly follow the charismatic leader, whether the leader's reads were accurate or not. But blindly following any player does not lead to victory. That's the very reason a variety of playstyles and some honest discussion about the evidence and logic behind someone's case is necessary.

The dividing lines don't necessarily need to be charismatic aggressive vs. logic-machining. There are far more playstyles than this that help benefit a game that don't fall solidly into these two categories. The issue Dastrn and I saw was that everyone in this game (except scum, apparently) seemed totally disinterested in playing any other style than "gut feels." Only one playstyle was encouraged by town, resulting in town missing out on important information that could have prevented a loss.

Again, not saying that we were 100% right by any means, but I am saying that our rightness percentage could have been increased if people had been open and willing to engage.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

You fail to understand though that if you feel ostracized from the rest of town because they are playing a different game, then you have three options. One you can adapt their style and rhetoric to make them see your point. Two you can continue to ostracize yourself until your point of view is not seen as relevant to the rest of town. Or three, you can replace out and not even play the game so you don't have to deal with playing with a town that doesn't understand your style of play.

If you play mafia on a solely logical basis then you are going to come up short. Mafia isn't a game of pure logic as much as they are used to attack an opponent's though process or driving attack via using informal fallacies that are significantly watered down. When it comes to mafia, logic isn't the beginning and the end of mafia. Rather it is used as a tool to keep town on the same page, convince them to lynch someone, and is used as a pressure technique to observe how the person reacts to having their points deconstructed. It is impossible to win games solely with logic because logic doesn't concern figuring out motives, only showing how a questionable motive is flawed. Extrapolating reads from people using logic can be a powerful, but usage of flawed logic doesn't necessitate to the person being mafia as people aren't rational creatures.

I don't believe that town needs a contrasting set of opinions to 'shed the light' on the mafia. In fact, I think that the notion of mafia acting in a certain manner is logically preposterous. Town trends to lose games because of a lack of participation. It's not logical inquiry or differing opinions that reveal mafia, but the discernible gradient that comes in terms of town emotionally trying to empathize with one another and to mutually come to an understandable conclusion for their party. Town wins by out-caring the mafia. And vice versa. The notion of scummy behavior, bandwagons, and logic are tools to advance dialogue that will make people react and help in finding mafia. However intrinsically these tools have mostly no value in actually reading the intentions of another player, except under special circumstances.

 

[Dastrn]

You fail to understand though that if you feel ostracized from the rest of town because they are playing a different game, then you have three options. One you can adapt their style and rhetoric to make them see your point. Two you can continue to ostracize yourself until your point of view is not seen as relevant to the rest of town. Or three, you can replace out and not even play the game so you don't have to deal with playing with a town that doesn't understand your style of play.

If you play mafia on a solely logical basis then you are going to come up short. Mafia isn't a game of pure logic as much as they are used to attack an opponent's though process or driving attack via using informal fallacies that are significantly watered down. When it comes to mafia, logic isn't the beginning and the end of mafia. Rather it is used as a tool to keep town on the same page, convince them to lynch someone, and is used as a pressure technique to observe how the person reacts to having their points deconstructed. It is impossible to win games solely with logic because logic doesn't concern figuring out motives, only showing how a questionable motive is flawed. Extrapolating reads from people using logic can be a powerful, but usage of flawed logic doesn't necessitate to the person being mafia as people aren't rational creatures.

I don't believe that town needs a contrasting set of opinions to 'shed the light' on the mafia. In fact, I think that the notion of mafia acting in a certain manner is logically preposterous. Town trends to lose games because of a lack of participation. It's not logical inquiry or differing opinions that reveal mafia, but the discernible gradient that comes in terms of town emotionally trying to empathize with one another and to mutually come to an understandable conclusion for their party. Town wins by out-caring the mafia. And vice versa. The notion of scummy behavior, bandwagons, and logic are tools to advance dialogue that will make people react and help in finding mafia. However intrinsically these tools have mostly no value in actually reading the intentions of another player, except under special circumstances.

You're summarizing our pleas to include more logic as "include ONLY logic" which has never been the argument made. It's a good description you just gave, and neither of us will disagree with it. But you just blew down a strawman, I'm afraid.

Either way, good post.

 

[Orboknown]

Them comments circus?

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

You're summarizing our pleas to include more logic as "include ONLY logic" which has never been the argument made. It's a good description you just gave, and neither of us will disagree with it. But you just blew down a strawman, I'm afraid. Either way, good post.

You are correct. Xatres was using a broad brush to paint himself as a logic oriented player to show contrast between him and how he viewed Cello's play. However, I sniped on the logic aspect because I don't really believe that it is as much a play style as a tool of play. There's no reason that a charismatic player wouldn't also use logic in his argument.

In my post I wanted to show that this game at its core is simpler than it appears. The hard part of mafia comes from discerning emotion from what little posts carry it and then using that as basis to form a read. I don't believe that the games we play are terribly intellectual or even logical given the closed nature of the roles which makes mechanic and role play difficult as mafia will never disclose their abilities at face value unless they are really, really stupid. It wasn't a conscious decision on my end to take his broad-brush characterization of himself and turn it into a type of character. Rather, in the process of knocking down such a broad-brush character I took liberty on my end to present my take on what such a player would carry into a game and what that weakness would be. I was open to accept his caveats & discuss further, ect.

tl;dr: I can see a representative straw man, but my use of it was not intentional and apologize if I made a case that seemed constructed upon slander.

 

[Circus]

Them comments circus?

I've lost my motivation to say a lot of what I was going to say, either because someone else has already brought it up or because what I wanted to see was largely knee-jerk emotion that has withered with time (who knows, maybe I'll work myself back up as I write this).

I'll hit a few basic things.

I tend to intrinsically balance games in favor of town—not on purpose, it just happens. For that reason, I specifically requested Marshy's help balancing my original setup, because I think he's sort of the opposite. In a game that is structured like this, there was always going to be swing, and I knew that wouldn't change, but I wanted Marshy's help to at least make sure both sides stood relatively even at the beginning. I think the game I ended up with is much better than the one I first presented to Marshy, but I also think I've overcorrected. If I were to run the game again, maybe I would take away Validar's BP (almost invalidating Inigo's Killing Edge, but I'd adapt somehow). Maybe I'd limit the weapon pool a little more. I don't know.

Also, I tend to agree that Town being able to lose after two mislynches (with 3 scum) is bad design, particularly in standard games of Mafia. In a game like this, however, I think it's much more tolerable. What needs to be understood here (and Zen touched on a lot of good points related to this already), is that Town didn't just lose after being wrong twice. Scum positioned themselves and the town to make it so. Had Kary lived to see D3 rather than Sokr, the game would still be going on right now. Had Zen left FML to his practically assured destruction on D2 rather than throwing his weight in full support of him, all of the momentum would have shifted. This is that kind of game. Scum won quickly because they took to the rules quickly (and got a little lucky). They were organized and they planned well. And they all played the game to their specific roles.

On that last point, Town very much did not play to their roles. Xastrn and Potassium used up their only weapons killing players they didn't even really have scumreads on, both knowing quite well at the time that they wouldn't be finding new usable weapons for their respective characters. This is a sign things are not going the right way. Red Ryu drew a BP, and should have been flagging down the Night Kill at all times as a result. Instead, he stayed in the background for most of Day 1, and then trusted dabuz enough on D2 to tell him his role, and only gave the slightest bit of pause when he noticed this his role and dabuz's safeclaim could be incongruous. Kary's role (Merc with blade that cuts anything) wants to be killing pretty much all the time. Inigo, and to a lesser extent, Severa, existed to take the brunt of town firing responsibility. Raz never got a chance to take it; Kary was just too passive.

I don't' say this with any malice. People are comfortable playing certain ways, regardless of the roles they draw, and they make certain decisions based on individual moments, rather than cumulative ones. It's simply an element of town's defeat. None of the safety nets built into the game were initiated and town made totally unnecessary sacrifices early on and scum was able to take advantage of that.

Side note: I seriously thought Lucina was almost going to break the game in town's favor with the Pair Up mechanic. Claimed main character with an unbreakable weapon who can basically stay invincible as long as she hides behind townies all game? That's the main reason I included scum's Galeforce ability, to be honest—to make sure they had a response to that slot. Little did I know town would bumrush it halfway through D1.

So all of that is basically me saying that scum did totally dominate this game, and part of that may very well have to do with the setup swing, but a lot of also simply had to do with that team working well and seizing opportunities and playing the long game, in addition to town making some rather silly choices. This should not be ignored.

Final few things I want to say without going into too much detail because I've made this post long enough:

I want to highlight Kary and Kantrip's play on early D2. Both did a fantastic job putting Zen's feet to the fire for all of the right reasons. Had one of you been stubborn or impatient enough to kill Zen on D2, this game would have been town's game to lose. Unfortunately, both of you are a little too cautious for you own good.

Xastrn, everything you've said regarding Zen's safeclaim, both in-game and post-, is proof to me that I made the right choice. That claim was put there to do exactly what it did—punish players who put more weight in mod meta and setup speculation than actual scum hunting. I don't want to brow beat you about this since it's already been discussed some, but please do take note that you are the only player in the game who ever thought Zen's claim was as good as a Cop clear (this idea is laughable, period). In fact, most players who expressed an opinion on it dismissed it quite heavily. This allowed them to evaluate Zen on his actions rather than his words, and several correctly began to suspect that he was up to something. You said in the game that you thought Dgames mafia play had deteriorated in the 2 years since you were last active (I'm paraphrasing). I hope you'll come to see that the opposite is true. Methods like Outguess The Mod are treated as the fallacies they are now. Setup speculation was never good play, and the current crop of players know that better than anyone, because they've seen it fail several times (much like it did here). Nice job getting FML though. Even without the chatlog shenanigans, you caught him mucking up his claim in your private communication—a classic scumslip, especially for hydras. That slot was poised to skate by on enthusiasm otherwise.

Zen, you make a great scum leader. As town, since you don't begin with all the pieces, your plans can sometimes be mishandled and detrimental. But as scum, you can really plan ahead and commit to a strategy that can work. There were several ways to win this game, and you found the fastest one early and stuck with it. Well done. You had a good team with which to do it as well.

Special mention to Death Mountain for being the only slot to call out dabuz. dabuz can usually get away with play he exhibited in this game, so it would have been easy to wave off the slot until later, but you really seemed to get the scent of scum in your nostrils there.

Raz, Ryker, better luck next time.

I guess that's it. Swingy game swung, but I defend most of its infrastructure. Scum played well. Town couldn't coordinate quickly enough. Blah.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

I guess that's it. Swingy game swung, but I defend most of its infrastructure. Scum played well. Town couldn't coordinate quickly enough. Blah.

Good post.

I feel like this setup had some tension in that scum could not day kill, but town did not know that. In some ways that made it exciting- because scum had to keep this fact in the dark, and they did a good job of that. On the other hand, i feel like a mass-claim might have blown the game wide open, with all the scum claiming non-killing roles. I don't know. It was certainly very interesting, though, and I think that it worked out fine. I think I'm better suited to vanilla setups, but what do.

Thanks very much for modding, Circus. <3

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

And this is why I hate drawing BP/Commuter, I don't play in a way that works with it and no one around here would ever consider to shoot me during the night.

Which plays into my playstyle as town and scum and how I always make it to endgame.