"Don't look too town as scum"

[RadiantCowbells]

You can always reinvent yourself as scum and you always need to be doing stuff that people won't point to recent scum experiences and be like HEY HE DID THAT AS SCUM.

That said I went undefeated as scum in 2018 while only actually trying in one game and pretty much just lurking the rest of them so you can get away with that even.

Rolling scum is like pressing the easy button

It's easy to win as scum if you play scummy when town. People will look at meta, say

he always plays that way,

and let it go. And there seems to be a trend toward that.

People like that should be policy lynched, vigged, or investigated.

Unfortunately, towns have gotten away from those things. So, now game developers are making town-sided setups.

Really, towns should just go back to fundamentals, and those fundamentals should be taught in newbies.

Are you implying that I'm scummy as town?

You might be interested to know that 3 years ago as town my most notable characteristic was that I basically never got mislynched and that over dozens of anonymous games I have only been lynched once and that was a turbo where I was plastered. So like turns out I'm pretty Towny in a vacuum contrary to your assertions. If you want an on-site example read Schadd's the coalition: I'm the person that everyone started townblocking on page one.

Or maybe that was a strawman designed to somehow pretend that my imagined faults as a mafia player are also responsible for the meta shift towards stronger towns that lost you that game, because simply blaming me for a townsided setup doesn't mesh with the reality of the setup nor the fact that town winrate in normals was a very reasonable 54% last year despite people constantly complaining that setups are townsided. (in a year where I played zero normal games, so not my fault either)

[RadiantCowbells]

Truthfully I don't think that there's much chance that was a good faith comment but just in case it was I covered my bases.

[Persivul]

Are you implying that I'm scummy as town?

Now? I don't know, as I stopped playing with you. You used to be.

You might be interested to know that 3 years ago as town my most notable characteristic was that I basically never got mislynched and that over dozens of anonymous games I have only been lynched once and that was a turbo where I was plastered. So like turns out I'm pretty Towny in a vacuum contrary to your assertions. If you want an on-site example read Schadd's the coalition: I'm the person that everyone started townblocking on page one.

I recall you boasting about your scum win rate. I checked your 2015 games then and found that yes, you won all your scum games, but you had a low town win rate.

Or maybe that was a strawman designed to somehow pretend that my imagined faults as a mafia player are also responsible for the meta shift towards stronger towns that lost you that game, because simply blaming me for a townsided setup doesn't mesh with the reality of the setup nor the fact that town winrate in normals was a very reasonable 54% last year despite people constantly complaining that setups are townsided. (in a year where I played zero normal games, so not my fault either)

As I said, I think that if town went back to some practices that used to be conventional wisdom, they wouldn't need to be babied with extra powers.

[RadiantCowbells]

I recall you boasting about your scum win rate. I checked your 2015 games then and found that yes, you won all your scum games, but you had a low town win rate

I suppose so. I'm not sure of the point you're trying to make though. I did just below 60% this year!

And I've never been a naturally scummy player regardless of what you feel suits your agenda to say.

[RadiantCowbells]

Your join date is 2015 which had a very low town WR in normals, so

[Xtoxm]

Towns are being overcompensated now. If running games on the EV curve results in scum winning more often because towns are bad I'm fine with that.

[mhsmith0]

I'd say that "looking town" in a lot of peoples' minds is a function of consistent engagement, making sense, and sounding like an intelligent human being.

None of those things are actually towntells, of course, and in terms of many peoples' metas, are explicit scumtells.

note to self: don't roll scum against mhsmith0
he's already onto you

It kind of blows my mind, when scum thinks they can get away with nonsensical WIFOM - most can’t and many horribly over-estimate their ability to successfully pull that off.

fwiw I find that relatively few scum play with lots of nonsensical WIFOM bs (NOT zero but few)
many town players do stuff that LOOKS like nonsensical WIFOM scum bs tho

not a lock tell since it can vary
but there's a definite tendency among a substantial # of people that the dumber the posts, the likelier it is that they're made by town (whereas when they roll scum they make some effort to make sense, to avoid getting into pointless fights [especially the mega fights that completely swamp the thread], etc)

[mhsmith0]

Towns are being overcompensated now. If running games on the EV curve results in scum winning more often because towns are bad I'm fine with that.

it's an interesting debate

multiple times I've taken a break from NRG reviewing, and then come back and I'm like "wait, we're giving town THIS much crazy power?"
and then I watch as wolves win the games I pass anyway, sometimes in sweeps

[mhsmith0]

There are times that someone very town read gets to LyLo even though they are town, so if you're scum you can try to write it off as WIFOM as well, but it's kind of rare and...

I mean, it's very suspicious for someone being town read so strongly and early to get to LyLo. You can end up getting lynched only for that reason.

Being town read but not so much town read is the best place for scum I would say. Hard to get there though, since it's already a challenge to sound town anyway.

However...I don't think anyone should worry about being too town read as scum, you'll probably end up doing one or two scummy things at minimum.

shoot the players with brains well before lylo
problem solved

[Persivul]

I'm not sure of the point you're trying to make though.

Basically the same one Mastina made - your sole focus should be on the game at hand. Also, that people who are concerned about their meta are generally concerned about their scum games more than their town games.

[Persivul]

Towns are being overcompensated now. If running games on the EV curve results in scum winning more often because towns are bad I'm fine with that.

^This

Towns scoff at fundamentals, then get discouraged when they lose.

If towns want to win, they should play better.

[Persivul]

Mafia isn't easy.

First, you need to learn how to scum hunt as town. Even if you're not successful at identifying scum that often, if you're overtly hunting, at least you're giving other townies a fair shot to read YOU as town.

Then, you have to learn how to FAKE that same scum hunting as scum. That's hard for most people. They get caught as scum and don't like rolling scum. The right thing to do here is to continue working at it, but some people:

Let their town play get scummy as well. They don't overtly scum hunt. They don't make themselves transparent. The result of this is:
- in time, they win more as scum, because their scum game now looks like their town game.
- but, they're harder to read as town also, so their town win rate goes down.

IOW, your town and scum games need to look the same in order to be successful. You can accomplish that by either improving your scum game to make it look town, or sandbagging on your town game to make it look scum. To the extent that people on site do the latter, town win rates suffer.

I think that people who have a higher win rate as scum than as town have frequently done the latter.

[northsidegal]

i think very, very few people have ever deliberately held back their towngame to improve their scumgame

i think a very large portion of the playerlist has a higher scum winrate than town winrate and that has no correlation at all with any sandbagging at all.

[Persivul]

i think very, very few people have ever deliberately held back their towngame to improve their scumgame

Deliberately? Sure, I'm not saying those people

consciously

go through the steps I outlined. But, there's generally one or two people per game who just lurk or fluff post or otherwise don't overtly scum hunt.

[northsidegal]

i don't think i understand your point

[Nancy Drew 39]

Mafia isn't easy.

First, you need to learn how to scum hunt as town. Even if you're not successful at identifying scum that often, if you're overtly hunting, at least you're giving other townies a fair shot to read YOU as town.

Then, you have to learn how to FAKE that same scum hunting as scum. That's hard for most people. They get caught as scum and don't like rolling scum. The right thing to do here is to continue working at it, but some people:

Let their town play get scummy as well. They don't overtly scum hunt. They don't make themselves transparent. The result of this is:
- in time, they win more as scum, because their scum game now looks like their town game.
- but, they're harder to read as town also, so their town win rate goes down.

IOW, your town and scum games need to look the same in order to be successful. You can accomplish that by either improving your scum game to make it look town, or sandbagging on your town game to make it look scum. To the extent that people on site do the latter, town win rates suffer.

I think that people who have a higher win rate as scum than as town have frequently done the latter.

Well scum KNOW who scum are, being the “informed minority”, unless it’s multiball, so you’d have to mimic badtown and hunt for viable mislynchbait.

The problems occur, when that’s hard to find.

[Nancy Drew 39]

i think very, very few people have ever deliberately held back their towngame to improve their scumgame

i think a very large portion of the playerlist has a higher scum winrate than town winrate and that has no correlation at all with any sandbagging at all.

Town usually plays bad and mislynches the lhf, which scum usually isn’t.

[RadiantCowbells]

The only two players who I think have ever historically sandbagged their town game for the benefit of their scum game are Elsa Jay now and Boonskiies a long time ago

[Firebringer]

people still use the word sandbag?

[Persivul]

people still use the word sandbag?

Old people do.

[Firebringer]

This is kind of interesting to me in a weird way because I put in substantially less effort into my scum game than my town game. But most people I find see my scum game and are bad judges of my town game so they give me townreads for it, which makes me scratch my head but its really cause they have a shallow view of my town game to give me these reads.

I really think this is more of "people are bad at reading people and don't know what is and isn't alignment indicative in play" not that people are downplaying games in order to perform better. Sure, there are people who don't do much. Isn't that reason for you to focus more on them and sort them better?

[brassherald]

Nobody else makes me laugh at work so consistently.

<3

[Ankamius]

As scum, kill the players most likely to catch your team over time

When none of those are left, kill those who hold town together

When none of those are left, kill those that are least lynchable

Done.

EDIT: first two can be switched, but those are the two you need to target, not the most town. If you are needing to hit the townblock to not lose, your team fucked up badly, because that is the strategy with the least damage to town per kill

[the worst]

i think very, very few people have ever deliberately held back their towngame to improve their scumgame

i think a very large portion of the playerlist has a higher scum winrate than town winrate and that has no correlation at all with any sandbagging at all.

Being against the spirit of the game is one thing but it's a lot of unfun misplaced energy acrually doing this across your career.

I'd be pretty offended of being accused of it without trying to get in my head first. (and I candidly think there are grounds to mistake me for someone who does this. )

[the worst]

i think very, very few people have ever deliberately held back their towngame to improve their scumgame

Deliberately? Sure, I'm not saying those people

consciously

go through the steps I outlined. But, there's generally one or two people per game who just lurk or fluff post or otherwise don't overtly scum hunt.

unfortunately people who don't like actually playing the game exist but don't confuse them for different playstyles - I don't think there are an average of 1-2 people a game who aren't playing for the sake of it.