You've pitched this "scummy intentions and bad play are on the same level D1" over and over again yet you offer no analysis to show what the "same level" even is, and why that's the case.
We've continually told you over and over again that discerning scummy intent from player's posts is crucial and a good game of mafia. Fundamentally, having scummy intent and making a stupid mistake or being tricked are different, and it's up to good scum hunters to figure those two scenarios out.
I think what you're trying to say is that actions with scummy intent look just like stupid mistakes, in which case I think we all agree with you, at least on D1. But that DOES NOT carry over to the scummyness of those things. Just because two actions looks similar and might seem "equally anti-town" on the surface, doesn't mean they are equally anti-town through and through.
You're throwing these sweeping statements around like "there's no depth to scummy actions on D1" with absolutely no backing analysis. If by no depth you mean that the scum can't be trying to enact and provoke certain actions and reactions, or otherwise work toward their win condition, you're just flat out wrong, or you've been playing with some really bad mafia partners. From the get go mafia are going to be working to establish a comfortable position for themselves to be in and guide discussion the way they wanna see it go. If I'm understanding you properly when you say "depth" (and I can't really be blamed if I'm not, since again, no analysis to work with) then you're just plain wrong.
*facepalm*
(hypothetical scenarios ensue, btw)
It's not hard, really. On D1, you have no concrete information other than your own alignment and roles. People are lynched for various reasons, but one of the rarest on D1 is "this guy is obviously mafia". It's more a game of having a pool of players that have made mistakes, picking one you don't like, then lynching them. This is inefficient, and bad for town. It's actually more likely to hit mafia if you use a random number generator and lynch whoever shows up than it is to allow mafia to control the fate of a lynch when you can't determine connections. (the connections as a result of that can be useful, but on D1 a mislynch is pretty common)
There is no depth to any accusation. That means you have no guarantees and have no way to differentiate between bad play and scuminess that can be played off as bad play simply because there are no guaranteed connections. You're just playing a guessing game by seeing one mistake, making a conclusion, and then riding that conclusion to a flip.
That means if you say "look at Tom, he's obviously scum" and then quote his posts and talk about how he's focused primarily on player A or B and the rest of his post has been meaningless fluff... you have no confirmation unless you lynch him and he flips or the person he was accusing flips. Even then, it's a gamble without more information. If someone makes a slip of the tongue and you catch them on it because it appears they've changed their mind or lied in the past, you can say "ah HA! We've found scum!" but there is no depth to it. You can't guarantee it in any way until there are flips. You are just guessing and trusting gut instinct.
Now, if KevinM and Tom continue to be their own little pair and hunt similar people, you can watch their actions. Imagine Tom flips town after being killed N2. It'd be pretty easy to look back at the previous interactions and say "Hey, these guys would just piggyback Tom and KevinM on all of their wagons, but when they started wagoning FrozenFlame they protected him", it makes the guys protected Flame obvious targets of discussion. Information gained from them or their flips can help determine KevinM's alignment as well as those they're connected to. However, let's change the scenario.
KevinM and Tom continue to be their own little pair and hunt similar people, and you watch their actions. They started wagoning FrozenFlame, and someone didn't support them in it. That someone supported their wagon on another player or two.
The player that didn't support the Flame wagon hasn't made a scum tell in any way, shape, or form because there are no connections to be made. It's a guess.
As such, you have to look at D1 as a guessing game. Despite the negative knee jerk reaction your brain just had, guessing games have rules and patterns that you can use to help you win.
What can we do to get the best possible result for town? We know we need a lynch. Lynching town is better than a no-lynch. This isn't an opinion, it's a statistical fact. It's even more important to get a lynch in games with strong players such as this.
Looking at this, we have three main scenarios:
1. No one makes any mistakes
2. Players make mistakes
3. Mafia members accidentally out themselves in an obvious manner and can be confirmed
#1 is impossible, and #3 is rare. It's almost always #2. I can see strong "that guy's scum" claims when there's a small group that plays together often, but even then its iffy.
So we have a game where players, both town and mafia, make mistakes. You can't say that mafia is guaranteed to be active or inactive; I'm active regardless of my alignment, and I know many players that are inactive regardless of theirs. You have no meta information that can really confirm alignment.
But then... someone makes a mistake.
You see someone tunnel the same person over and over and over again, and you're not quite sure why. A wagon gets put on the person being tunneled and the person gets to L-3 and the tunneler demands a claim. Looking back at the original exchanges, you find out that the person doing the tunneling either misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued something someone said, and has used it to tunnel them. That's bad, no? Imagine if someone was reading our exchange and said "Well... duh. OS is right, I don't understand what Flame is talking about." and then watched the game go on with a wagon on me with you right up in the front.... but you're town and simply didn't understand something I said.
Is this scummy behavior? Do we lynch the person close to a lynch even if we disagree with the reasoning, or do we try to flip the lynch on the person we don't understand?
The truth of the matter is, you can't know. All you know is that one player is aggressive and you disagree with his thought process. Many times I've seen that scenario play out only to find the aggressive player merely misunderstood something and brought about a townie death, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
What you CAN do to maximize success is to lynch inactives (players that post very little, or very little substance) and those that have larger scum tells and simply save mistakes made by other players for later days. The philosophy that we have to lynch someone with the slightest hiccup on D1 is wrong. It's a much more sound philosophy to get rid of players that are useless to town, as we have
information on those that actually post. MenoUnderwater has posted little to naught, and Mentos is silent again.
Pressure inactives, make 'em post, and then you're left with choosing from whoever is scummiest or the least useful. Otherwise, mafia's best strategy is to simply leave one of their members inactive until D3. You can't have any guarantee on someone based on any error you find on D1, not until you find a flip later. At a later date you can use your newfound knowledge to pin them, but for now? Just write it down in notepad and save it for later. There's no depth to any accusations on D1, only feeling people out and inactives.
Like he resounding theme of your posts is "if you are playing or posting in a way that I don't like on the surface, you're anti-town because you're making it tough for me to read or interact with you" or something along those lines. Just because the way someone chooses to express themselves doesn't jive with you doesn't make them scummy. We can all look to Babyjesus for a perfect example of that.
I didn't say it made them scummy.
He's writing in haiku, and posting things like "Overswarm is Overswarm" because it's 7 syllables. Do you know what "overswarm is overswarm" means? Do you know what HIS meaning behind it is, or are you just attributing your own to it?
If someone else shows to be more of a pain or has scummy behavior, I'll go for them. But on D1? I'll lynch people that post in Haiku because they're the guy in the group that wants to go exploring with you, but only if he can walk backwards. HE'S SO CRAZY AND ZANY. Such an individual, not idiotic at all. Kill him if you have no better options, then you don't have to deal with that anymore.
Your entire argument against the chart being made public is this fear mongering stance that contends if he publishes the chart later in the game, it'll distract us from our scumhunting. That's so wrong.
...My argument against the chart is that it is near useless at its core unless it is done properly, and even then it's got just as big a chance of screwing us over than it does for helping us since
one guy is determining the connections and
we do not know his alignment. That data can't help unless its accurate, and we have no reason to believe it will be, nor what good it will even do.
What supporters of this mystery chart are saying is that we should be able to look at it, determine he hasn't left anything out or misinterpreted something, and then make a call on that.
Funny story: I say "get the data right, or I'm starting a wagon on you. This chart is going to be useless."
I hear: "that's so dumb, why would you say something like that? And this chart is gonna be useful"
I say: "you have no way of knowing the chart will be accurate! He could be missing things, or deliberately holding them back, or just misinterpreting them!"
I hear: "then he's obviously scum, and we'll lynch him since the data is wrong"
Which is exactly what I said in the first place. Lynch him if he gets the data wrong. Except I told him in advance so he knows not to goof around with it and I'm not going to be some scummy opportunist picking on someone making a huge mistake D3. I just thought a few steps ahead.
If we have strong leads in the future, and Meno tries to interrupt that scumhunting, that tells us something AND we don't have to get distracted by it. We just keep following our leads. It's called self-control. If we DON'T have strong leads, then the chart could be the perfect remedy to a stagnating game. Like I said earlier, if the chart has flaws, they can be pointed out and discussed. The charts is FAR from fluff, and if I were Meno I'd be insulted that you'd even try to draw that comparison. The chart, as far as it has been described, would be a catalog of all sorts of interactions between all players throughout the game. How could that possibly be bad for discussion? You're just trying to make it seem like it would be bad because some people might get distracted by it and any strong leads we have might disappear, which is pretty ludicrous IMO.
Self-control... have you played mafia on smashboards? Someone goes inactive for two days and they're either quick lynched for hiding like scum or completely forgotten
Meno, post an example of your chart so we can see. I believe you've used this chart before?
Flame, stop posting AtE stuff. I know it's just how you post, but ease up. And don't tell Meno how he should feel.
*sigh* Arguing about all this gameplay related stuff really throws my scumdar for a loop. It can be really hard to tell when people are trying to push strategy agendas in order to encourage bad town play and enable scum victory, or if they're just subborn as hell and won't back down on even the most flawed of principal gameplay stances. >_<
Look at it from a point of view that is bad for town.
"If I was mafia, could I use (blank) to my advantage?"
If so, that's a dangerous strategy for town to hold onto as a whole. I know if I was mafia and making some interactions chart, I could easily manipulate it in a way that would allow for scum to survive. Hell, I could bus a scummate and get two free mislynches out of it. It's not hard to imagine what you could do when you control the information.
