Among Us Mafia [GAME OVER]

[Infinity 324]

Scum have really been getting steamrolled in larges lately

[Thestatusquo]

For the record: I feel like this game's mechanics may have incentivized the town to claim rooms, but also did have good punishments in place for them doing so. While the double-kill mechanic was one scum may not have been able to use well given the room claim, had the two scum roles designed to counter this strategy not been run up on D3/D4, due to the town's massclaiming of where they'd be, I do think the alt-wincon would've been impossible to achieve. Not hard--utterly impossible.

To put this into standard game mechanics:
If the town has a town doctor and a town cop and a town watcher and the scum have a scum ninja-strongman, the town would normally be punished for massclaiming, because the scum role would eat the town roles alive.
However, if the scum ninia-strongman is eliminated, suddenly, the mechanic used to punish the town from massclaiming is removed, and massclaiming goes from being something harming the town to being something that guarantees a town win.

Similar thing here; the massclaim of location was guaranteed to keep the town from achieving the alt-wincon with the scum PRs alive, but with the scum PRs dead, the town massclaiming guaranteed their ability to fulfill it.

this was my POV. because it was tied to the room, all scum had to do was keep sabotaging it. but then i see there is a "doctor" that can prevent a room from being sabotaged.

Prevents the double kill, not the sabo. The RB is the only method has of stopping the sabo.

[DkKoba]

if u cant understand the distinction people make psychologically then idk what to tell u

im speaking from the PoV of average mafia player who doesn't assume the mod gave scum every tool in the universe to stop town.

Do you really join games (or think most people join games) thinking "the mod will let us no elim and not play mafia for 2 days and then win."

Because that's what the towns plan required to be true about my game to have a chance of working. As a player in this game (and any closed setup I play in, for that matter.) I assume that if I tell scum information that I have bad things will happen to me, for this game specifically I would have also assumed the mod wouldn't just design a game where town has no protection from being double killed in the setup, and indeed the double kill was balanced in two different other ways.

There at least was a more interesting discussion in this game because the double kill as you point out, but that discussion wasn't really had. Instead town just started claiming willy nilly and no elimmed day 1 and the people who suggested that this was maybe not a good idea (who were incidentally ALL town, by the way) got shouted down and called suspicious. I'm not saying that maybe you can't come to a place where you think the double kill is scarier than giving scum info, but I doubt that should be anyones default position in a closed setup.

Basically I think town played day 1 like this was an open setup and it ain't. But, a lot of mech mistakes get fixed with good day play and good night actions, and the town was very good in that regard here. I think I said multiple times in the dead thread from D1 on that there was just a shockingly large number of players in this game who were painfully town, and town was just going to win this game with town blocking and PoE aided by the PTs at night, which is pretty much exactly what happened, even though the win con was technically tasks.

town no lims d1-> learns theres are consequences for actions d2 bc rooms blocked, they try to no lim again-> learn there are consequences because tasks sabotaged
there's feedback there even if they went that path. (i think no lim and room planning was the optimal play regardless, although claiming tasks was NOT.)

[DkKoba]

For the record: I feel like this game's mechanics may have incentivized the town to claim rooms, but also did have good punishments in place for them doing so. While the double-kill mechanic was one scum may not have been able to use well given the room claim, had the two scum roles designed to counter this strategy not been run up on D3/D4, due to the town's massclaiming of where they'd be, I do think the alt-wincon would've been impossible to achieve. Not hard--utterly impossible.

To put this into standard game mechanics:
If the town has a town doctor and a town cop and a town watcher and the scum have a scum ninja-strongman, the town would normally be punished for massclaiming, because the scum role would eat the town roles alive.
However, if the scum ninia-strongman is eliminated, suddenly, the mechanic used to punish the town from massclaiming is removed, and massclaiming goes from being something harming the town to being something that guarantees a town win.

Similar thing here; the massclaim of location was guaranteed to keep the town from achieving the alt-wincon with the scum PRs alive, but with the scum PRs dead, the town massclaiming guaranteed their ability to fulfill it.

this was my POV. because it was tied to the room, all scum had to do was keep sabotaging it. but then i see there is a "doctor" that can prevent a room from being sabotaged.

Prevents the double kill, not the sabo. The RB is the only method has of stopping the sabo.

ahh i never knew that.

[Thestatusquo]

if u cant understand the distinction people make psychologically then idk what to tell u

im speaking from the PoV of average mafia player who doesn't assume the mod gave scum every tool in the universe to stop town.

Do you really join games (or think most people join games) thinking "the mod will let us no elim and not play mafia for 2 days and then win."

Because that's what the towns plan required to be true about my game to have a chance of working. As a player in this game (and any closed setup I play in, for that matter.) I assume that if I tell scum information that I have bad things will happen to me, for this game specifically I would have also assumed the mod wouldn't just design a game where town has no protection from being double killed in the setup, and indeed the double kill was balanced in two different other ways.

There at least was a more interesting discussion in this game because the double kill as you point out, but that discussion wasn't really had. Instead town just started claiming willy nilly and no elimmed day 1 and the people who suggested that this was maybe not a good idea (who were incidentally ALL town, by the way) got shouted down and called suspicious. I'm not saying that maybe you can't come to a place where you think the double kill is scarier than giving scum info, but I doubt that should be anyones default position in a closed setup.

Basically I think town played day 1 like this was an open setup and it ain't. But, a lot of mech mistakes get fixed with good day play and good night actions, and the town was very good in that regard here. I think I said multiple times in the dead thread from D1 on that there was just a shockingly large number of players in this game who were painfully town, and town was just going to win this game with town blocking and PoE aided by the PTs at night, which is pretty much exactly what happened, even though the win con was technically tasks.

town no lims d1-> learns theres are consequences for actions d2 bc rooms blocked, they try to no lim again-> learn there are consequences because tasks sabotaged
there's feedback there even if they went that path. (i think no lim and room planning was the optimal play regardless, although claiming tasks was NOT.)

I'm confused here, you're saying you think the optimal strategy from day one WAS no elim and try to go for task victory?

[DkKoba]

from an uninformed standpoint, yes, no limming d1 is best.

[DkKoba]

you scout for info, you get discussion time in PTs, you advance town wincon. scum are always forced to kill so you dont really worry about being in evens.

[DkKoba]

when i replaced in and was rereading i was like "yeah even now im seeing it as good that town claimed stuff", i thought claiming all tasks was bad though.

[Thestatusquo]

from an uninformed standpoint, yes, no limming d1 is best.

This is so baffling to me. Why would you assume the mod created a setup that can be beaten in 2 game days without playing mafia? That doesn't make any sense. And then on top it off you think such a setup got past 3 reviewers who have among them run like 20-30 large themes?

It's just a bonkers thing to think.

[Thestatusquo]

when i replaced in and was rereading i was like "yeah even now im seeing it as good that town claimed stuff", i thought claiming all tasks was bad though.

If the town had not limmed scum day 2 3 and 4 claiming tasks and rooms (which is roughly the same thing since all the scum PRs target rooms en masse) the town would have had 0 chance of winning this game on tasks. Since the setup was pretty scum sided (without real investigative or protection roles) the town almost certainly loses that game and the conversation we're having right now is how stupid it was for town to claim and miselim d1.

I think you're being incredibly results oriented. Just because it worked out doesn't mean the process was good.

[DkKoba]

i think you misunderstood-> claiming the room you are going to is what I agreed with. not the room where your task is.

[Thestatusquo]

I think its funny though because I agree with outworldER that town played an absolutely stunningly good game of mafia. I don't think they played a good game of among us mafia lol, and I think if this setup were run again 100 times with players who don't know the setup and they all claim d1 and no elim town probably loses like 75% of those games.

I will say, that I think the PT mechanic is super interesting and reusable but also if I ever tell anyone I'm running a game where I have to send each vt an individual role PM and make 5 different PTs every night with the right privs and then remove them all the next day please slap me in the fucking face. thx.

[DkKoba]

the task mechanic was an investigative of its own IMO - it was valuable info once you get down to a limited number of people with tasks left.

[Thestatusquo]

i think you misunderstood-> claiming the room you are going to is what I agreed with. not the room where your task is.

How do those things functionally not work out to be the same thing for the scum power roles that can still strategically target those rooms?

[DkKoba]

I think its funny though because I agree with outworldER that town played an absolutely stunningly good game of mafia. I don't think they played a good game of among us mafia lol, and I think if this setup were run again 100 times with players who don't know the setup and they all claim d1 and no elim town probably loses like 75% of those games.

I will say, that I think the PT mechanic is super interesting and reusable but also if I ever tell anyone I'm running a game where I have to send each vt an individual role PM and make 5 different PTs every night with the right privs and then remove them all the next day please slap me in the fucking face. thx.

i think this is a game i'd rather run in discord rather than here. duplicating a channel and adding people to it is much easier. (its how i handle PTs on my homesite with mech heavy stuff when I moderate games).

[DkKoba]

i think you misunderstood-> claiming the room you are going to is what I agreed with. not the room where your task is.

How do those things functionally not work out to be the same thing for the scum power roles that can still strategically target those rooms?

you still get people who complete tasks. scum cant block everyone. and then you're left with a pile of people with claimed completed and claimed uncompleted.

[Thestatusquo]

Functionally I think that one of two things happens there:

1) Scum just target the rooms with the most people and those with tasks in those rooms can't complete them, which prevents the task victory.
2) People go to rooms without their tasks to be safe and this slows down task victory significantly such that with night kills town won't be able to achieve it until like day 8-9 at the earliest, even later as scum still manages to snag a couple every night to either prevent from getting to the right room or sabo.

I don't think either of those scenarios favor town.

[Gamma Emerald]

I think because of my spur-of-the-moment call to wagon end of day 1, that no elim ended up being more useful than an actual Titus lim would have been
I pinned 2 scum for things connected to that. Now, the reasons may not have held up in an argument but I was convinced by them and that gave me fuel to argue those reads.
In addition I think Cakez trying to push me for that was a turning point in how I read him, making me more confident he was scum over BM / some other weaker SRs
And then there was Blitzo who took way too much coaxing to vote. So practically all the scum looked worse because I made that move, in some way or another.

[DkKoba]

idk I approach mechs as another way to scumhunt someone, even if on paper it means nothing.
in chat mafia a lot of setups are heavily mech oriented. people read into HOW people claim stuff and discern alignment from it. (like ppl will call out a cop claim as scummy since they might word their report inno Player, when the system message says player is [alignment], etc)

if you take a look at betrayal mafia I, normally no one would think anything about someone claiming a sword like Lavar did(in fact forum players might instinctively townread it), but i used it as a sort of way to discern the intent of the person doing said action.

mafia is complex everything can be read into and deduced even if you disagree with it.

[Thestatusquo]

I think because of my spur-of-the-moment call to wagon end of day 1, that no elim ended up being more useful than an actual Titus lim would have been
I pinned 2 scum for things connected to that. Now, the reasons may not have held up in an argument but I was convinced by them and that gave me fuel to argue those reads.
In addition I think Cakez trying to push me for that was a turning point in how I read him, making me more confident he was scum over BM / some other weaker SRs
And then there was Blitzo who took way too much coaxing to vote. So practically all the scum looked worse because I made that move, in some way or another.

I think some of this is conf bias. Taly, who was town for instance, also looked very bad at the end of d1. MC also.

[DkKoba]

I think because of my spur-of-the-moment call to wagon end of day 1, that no elim ended up being more useful than an actual Titus lim would have been
I pinned 2 scum for things connected to that. Now, the reasons may not have held up in an argument but I was convinced by them and that gave me fuel to argue those reads.
In addition I think Cakez trying to push me for that was a turning point in how I read him, making me more confident he was scum over BM / some other weaker SRs
And then there was Blitzo who took way too much coaxing to vote. So practically all the scum looked worse because I made that move, in some way or another.

yup definitely having a faux wagon on d1 gives info too.

[DkKoba]

I think because of my spur-of-the-moment call to wagon end of day 1, that no elim ended up being more useful than an actual Titus lim would have been
I pinned 2 scum for things connected to that. Now, the reasons may not have held up in an argument but I was convinced by them and that gave me fuel to argue those reads.
In addition I think Cakez trying to push me for that was a turning point in how I read him, making me more confident he was scum over BM / some other weaker SRs
And then there was Blitzo who took way too much coaxing to vote. So practically all the scum looked worse because I made that move, in some way or another.

I think some of this is conf bias. Taly, who was town for instance, also looked very bad at the end of d1. MC also.

ironically this is why i scumread Taly slot.

[Thestatusquo]

idk I approach mechs as another way to scumhunt someone, even if on paper it means nothing.
in chat mafia a lot of setups are heavily mech oriented. people read into HOW people claim stuff and discern alignment from it. (like ppl will call out a cop claim as scummy since they might word their report inno Player, when the system message says player is [alignment], etc)

if you take a look at betrayal mafia I, normally no one would think anything about someone claiming a sword like Lavar did(in fact forum players might instinctively townread it), but i used it as a sort of way to discern the intent of the person doing said action.

mafia is complex everything can be read into and deduced even if you disagree with it.

I've probably played more chat mafia than you have tbh.

[Thestatusquo]

RIP scumchat. RIP IRC Mafia.

[Gamma Emerald]

Nah I think Taly voting absolute-last minute was quite towny