NY 172: Another Large Normal (GAME OVER)

[Nero Cain]

Thanks so much to Nero who did an awesome job especially under the awful circumstances I put him in.

At one point I was worried that it was a scum messenger fucking with me.

The scum qt was a good read. Kinda sad that Mastin thinks I'm an ass but Yates voting Mastin to try to get me to not worry with him was lol.

[ThAdmiral]

If you're coming from the basis that 4 scum and 16 town mountainous is balanced, sure this will look townsided. The thing is, you're wrong that is not even fucking close to balanced. 2:11 mountainous is theoretically scum sided and scum sided in practise. 1 strong PR + 3 weak ones was pretty much needed.

Theoretical balance ignores so much about what makes mafia "mafia" (i.e. the whole bit about players using logic and experience to root out scum) that I've found it best to only use as an extremely rough guide. In reality 9:2 is closer to being an even game than 11:2 because, really, if town mislynch 4 times in a row in a game this size they deserve to lose.

As I couldn't find probabilities for a 16:4 mountainous anywhere I calculated it myself. With random lynching, town win such a game 17.8% of the time. Indeed, to make a 4 scum mountainous theoretically town-sided, you need a staggering 71 town players. Of course we can talk about scumhunting and whatever, but scumhunting's effect is a long, long, long way from balancing a 17.8% win rate. Calling 16:4 mountainous even close to balanced is ludicrous. Power roles are clearly needed here.

See above.
I really don't think you are giving enough credit to town players. And simply put games shouldn't be 50/50 based on theoretical random chance. Town will almost always lynch above random levels. Admittedly 17% is quite low, but I think "actually" balanced games generally would be "theoretically" balanced at about 30% town/70% scum.

I mean surely you can see that in a real life, with real players, 4:71 would be absurd.

This will never happen but I'd love to see 16-4 mountainous and the setup for this game run 100 or 1000 times each. I'd bet on the mountainous game being more balanced over the long run.

[BBmolla]

I replaced out because I had zero desire to play with Mister Rogers.

[Damon_Gant]

ThAd, it's not only town who are allowed to use logic and experience. Scum can work the game in their favour too. One of the things I've done a lot over the years is pore over any stat I can because I'm fascinated by the question of how effective scumhunting is. I still haven't found or created the perfect data bank to test this but I've seen enough to know two things

1) It's less effective than you think
2) Day 1 lynch is either random or worse than random

I would place the theoretical town win percentage of a balanced mountainous game at ~45%. It's more complicated when you add power roles because skilful players really can use power roles far better than random chance.

I brought up the 4:71 thing just as an amusing stat. Frankly, if that game happened, everyone would be so confused that the lynching would become essentially random.

[Damon_Gant]

I replaced out because I had zero desire to play with Mister Rogers.

Mister Rogers replaced out on Day 1, yet was still only just pipped at the end by Snork as most frequent poster in the game...

[Zdenek]

Yesterday I was obviously still asleep in the morning, because I should have said 16-3 mountainous is scum sided. Not 16-4, and concluded that this game was balanced.

[ThAdmiral]

2) Day 1 lynch is either random or worse than random

Well you're wrong.

In any case we're somewhat moving away from the initial issue which is: do you think this game was balanced?

[Damon_Gant]

2) Day 1 lynch is either random or worse than random

Well you're wrong.

In any case we're somewhat moving away from the initial issue which is: do you think this game was balanced?

I notice that the newbie stats thing in mafia discussion does run slightly contrary to my statement, which is interesting. I used to have a set of stats for mini normals that were ghastly for Day 1 lynches, if only I could find them.

Anyway, you're right, it is dragging away from the main point. My view on the balance of this game specifically is that it isn't as horribly unbalanced as you think. The town is quite dependent on their gunsmith. If I were to make one change to perfect the balance, it wouldn't be to add a scum, but rather to swap the ascetic for a roleblocker.

[PeregrineV]

I honestly expected one more, for a team of 15-5. But, I always make the assumption of power roles also, unless the game specifies otherwise.

[PeregrineV]

Considering the lack of town power overall, I guess it's pretty balanced. I think you can keep the Ascetic, but change a goon to a JK. Primarily to prevent the whole "follow the cop" scenario, which is about what happened.

However, I think that designing games that have built-in paranoia as part of the town's obstacles is perfectly acceptable design structure. I know that others do not agree, and the benefits of it have decreased lately, but I think it is still valid nonetheless.

Re: Yates modkill
As a town player, I;'m glad it happened, etc. He would have been a pain to catch. Although we were well on our way to not lynching town, it definitely helped us.
As for the rationale behind it, I think the reasoning was extreme. None of us town knew the name of the scum QT, so there is no reason to assume it was for this game. If one of the players brought it up and stated it was a scumslip and pushed it and Yates was lynched for it, then so be it.

As for "other games". Assume I was scum with Yates in another game but not this one. And I found his pic. I would still know it's not our game QT and so woulnd't care.

If I was town in another game with Yates, I wouldn't know the name of the scum QT, so it would only be a scumlsip to the extent I wanted to push it.

In summary, he really could have been researching a scum QT from years ago in an effort to scumhunt another player in a game I could or could not be in. Or he may have found it funny and was reading it to relive scum memories. Who knows? If part of his response also led to the decision, then that I also get. But, absent any other information than a picture of a QT tab, I don't think a modkill would be warranted.

[PeregrineV]

Good job town and looking town and extra thanks to Ffery for replacing in at the last hour, even if you didn't know it was.

@Plessiez

- Good job modding! The vote counts were timely and clear, the deadlines were obvious, and the prods and replacements kept the game from stagnating. Thank you for letting me play!

The scum QT was a pretty entertaining read. I especially like the confidence early in the QT. But, I will say it was probably well-founded. However, the town players did a goob job looking town, and the vigs managed to take out the ones that were marginal.

I especially liked AP's /m36-

Lol, sidelining on dumb things like the vig gambit is SUCH a scumtell. And further, you can expect scum to split down the middle. Which we did. Admiral and mastin in the "it looks legit camp" and Yates and I in the "ITs fake" camp.

Also,

Yes. Damn pere for hammering without a claim.

@Mastin- your posts look like scum-Mastin.

Mastin still scum.

Vote: Mastin

At the time, I don't think there was anything Mastin could have said to get out of it. Maybe a PR claim, but I probably would have hammered anyway and took whatever heat the next day.

[projectmatt]

projectmatt - How could you post that day and NOT CLAIM A KILL... I'm just.. astounded. We went the entire day without knowing what was going on because a teammate checked out. We went an entire day with this unfinished business distracting our analysis... because he couldn't bring himself to clear it up for us.

Day 3 lasted

barely

over 48 hours - a 48 hours in which I was going to come back and post/claim my shot before you guys speedlynched AngryPidgeon, but that didn't happen. I take responbility for shooting Anxiety but I think giving me pain for not claiming in the short time span where I specifically asked for the town to wait to lynch but they did regardless is kind of a silly thing to do.

That being said, I enjoyed this game and I apologize for my inactivity. A lot of real life interference happened - I wasn't faking a thing. I actually believe all my townreads were completely spot on this game, which makes me happy. I just didn't have the game presence to push against/for certain reads.

Thanks for modding, Plez.

[projectmatt]

Actually, reading through, I didn't post in that short timespan of a day at all given how quickly it went and how busy I was.

[Snork]

My bad tons of confusion in this game and we won anyway.

[Damon_Gant]

@projectmatt

You did post day 4 though and declined to claim the kill. Admittedly you didn't post much and were maybe hoping to do a more comprehensive post later, but surely the one thing you could've done when you had the chance to post was to claim that kill.

[projectmatt]

My bad tons of confusion in this game and we won anyway.

Haha no problem man, sorry if I came off as aggressive there You know, reverting back to my mafia play.

And Damon - true. I didn't find it as urgent to claim immediately on day 4 as I did on day 3, and the torch for d3 was already passed.

[mastin2]

For the record:
I feel like I'm in the minority, as being scum this game who DID think this game was balanced.
In fact, I commented in the spoilered dead QT--I thought this game had better balance than basically most games I've played on MS.net recently. The numbers made sense. They just played out badly for scum. Modkill. AP investigation. (This is particularly true if Snork investigated AP without taking me into account--if AP was going to be Snork's investigation regardless, then AP was going to be screwed over regardless since we certainly weren't going to kill Snork.) The only thing that wasn't bad luck so much as bad circumstances was my play and what I was going through at the time.

(Basically, it was commented on that people thought I siteflaked and voted me when they found out I hadn't. Well...as it turns out, they weren't wrong. I nearly did. I was barely holding on. I won't give the full details, but essentially, I nearly gave up on logging in as mastin2 at all. It was a struggle, and I wasn't in any shape to be playing this game. So there was no lurking going on. There was no alignment advantage in my posting. There was merely a broken person, who should have replaced out but was too stubborn to do so. Which is why it's bad circumstances--not luck, but also not play. Just bad timing for the player in question. A couple weeks earlier or a month later, woulda been fine. At that exact time, not so much.)

[BBmolla]

I replaced out because I had zero desire to play with Mister Rogers.

Mister Rogers replaced out on Day 1, yet was still only just pipped at the end by Snork as most frequent poster in the game...

Consider me unsurprised.

[Damon_Gant]

Pretty much agree with all your points mastin. I hope things are better for you now. I think it's important to remember where mafia ought to be on the priority list (i.e. not high, particularly in bad times). Certainly at one point this game I allowed mafia to exacerbate the problems that I was having in real life and that is a stupid place to be.

[Snork]

I investigated AP because a majority of the town seemed to be scum reading him but we weren't lynching him. There was too much waffling going on about him and I thought it was a good spot to clear up one way or the other. I really wanted him to be town. When I got the result my heart sank.

[mastin2]

mastin I *knew* that I could get a good read on you based on your entrance. Your town and scum entrances are

vastly

different even though you don't seem aware of the differences.

(For the record, I think this is true of talah, too. Compare talah's entrance this game to other town games.)

A big ping was immediately differing reads. I don't think you put down more than two or three insta-reads which you actually have any meat behind. In the last game we played together where we hydra'd, I understood your reads *immediately*. I expected you to enter the thread with either slight disdain for my aggression or a hearty 'hullo' and you've done neither.

You've not tried to connect with me; not tried to *get* a read on me - you've simply said I'm scum and voted me.

In particular, compare that to this.

So yeah leaning scum until there's a reason not to.

(Which is super interesting considering you've just voted someone else even though you think I'm

definitely

scum).

(Which talah is also guilty of doing.)

So I feel like at least we have an amiable connection to the point where if mastin's town, I'd like to work with her, and I'd think that she'd be far more cautious and wanting to determine my alignment rather than just dropping a vote on me and then telling me I know virtually nothing about her.

Mokay. I'm actually happy to let mastin do her thing for the remainder of the day, and interact as necessary (or as prompted by her).

Probably more relevant ones if I dug deeper (this is a multitasking lazily-done search), but it conveys the idea.

Talah as town I was expecting to be working with me. Not against me.

[mastin2]

Um...please delete that.

[Tierce]