I don't think that these questions can be properly answered without jumping into oceans of conjecture and assuming/fabricating motivations. But its inevitable that its going to happen anyway if I state my rationale on why 3DS does not look great after this exchange. Warning: assumption zone ahead. I think a lot of it comes down to just looking at what happened: 3DS claimed neighbor without consulting his neighbors. You can interpret good faith if the point was to lower the suspicion pool, but the act of being a neighbor does not clear one's alignment, but DOES provide an association between players. So in the end, I don't see how town!3DS benefits from claiming this early. I'm not sure how the claim is going to fly in the neighborhood tonight, or what they'll discuss now that its out in the open, but the fact of the matter is that nobody's alignment is confirmed within it, so it will just be more discussion among players. Now that it is in the open, I expect full reports about what topics were discussed each night, now that we know the identities of the participants.
Scum!3DS does have something to gain though, and that is the act of performing a townie move early on. Roleclaiming is a naturally townie thing to do, especially if you remain un-CC'ed. That's because townies have no reason to undercut town, but the scum do. A successful fakeclaim by scum is one of the best things a scum could do, and having evidence to support the fakeclaim is even better. If 3DS is a mafia neighbor, but claim to be a town neighbor, then their living evidence is their other neighbors who can vouch for their role. And boom, a scum's claim goes un-CC'ed. Therefore, I believe that 3DS thought that it would be a townie move to claim neighbor this early, which they believed would make them look more innocent, when in reality, a town neighbor had no reason to disclose their neighborhood right out of the gate because it doesn't do anything to determine alignment anybody's alignment, creates a linkage between players that will carry on through the rest of the game, and are supposedly not performing any night actions besides communicating which means that sorting out logistics shouldn't be an issue.
However, in the possibility that this is all WIFOM, I still have been rubbed the wrong way by their recent content and will be voting them because of that.
BoomFrog : so about that LaserGuy. Woof or Grrr?
