Mini Normal 2135 (Endgame)

[Not Known 15]

10 town, 3 scum, all vanilla.

to be fair, this isn't actually Normal

Yeah that`s very not normal; people expect normals to be balanced(it is super scumsided), and they expect power roles.

[PranaDevil]

10 town, 3 scum, all vanilla.

to be fair, this isn't actually Normal

Yeah that`s very not normal; people expect normals to be balanced(it is super scumsided), and they expect power roles.

4 mislynches is scum sided?

The fuck?

Am I on some weird planet where town cannot win unless they are overpowered or some bullshit?

Like... a Cop/Doc set up is super town sided (barring a lucky NK of either PR early on)... all vanilla with 25% as scum is balanced.

[Datisi]

what is your definition of balanced exactly? going just by EV, scum win 10:3 mountainous 79.2% of the time. not even talking about how scum generally perform much better than EV in a mountainous setup.

[Knightmare491]

4 mislynches is scum sided?

The fuck?

Am I on some weird planet where town cannot win unless they are overpowered or some bullshit?

Like... a Cop/Doc set up is super town sided (barring a lucky NK of either PR early on)... all vanilla with 25% as scum is balanced.

It's not balanced is a mountainous. You can put that setup in the queue, nobody will sign up for it. That's why the mountainous setup is 11v2 for 13p, isn't it?

[PranaDevil]

I mean. It should be a relatively equal shot at winning. And there are a lot of factors that change that, obviously roles will change. But so will the type of player, and if slots are lurking or not contributing at all.

This game was a mess, and clearly a bastard game.

That EV may say scum will win roughly 4 out of 5 games. But 11-2, isn't good, not when the player base expect a 3 person scum team. There are a lot of factors to consider.

[Persivul]

Am I on some weird planet where town cannot win unless they are overpowered or some bullshit?

Yes. Here's what's happened over the years. Towns gave up on the conventional wisdom gathered over the years and let townies play in truly scummy manner. So, when those people are scum, they can't be lynched, because half the town says

but he plays that way as town too

. So, towns need to be overpowered to have a chance.

[Persivul]

This game was a mess, and clearly a bastard game.

Bastard is of course a mattrer of opinion. I was going to say that bastard was too far in describing this game, but I checked the wiki page and saw this quote from zoraster:

"I'll put it this way: roles aren't bastard. It's never the roles themselves that are the problem. It's that players don't have a reasonable expectation that a role's power or whatever would be used in the game causing them to play under false pretenses. Some roles are far more likely to be bastard (an announced Death Miller loses some of the reason people have ever wanted to use that role). But that doesn't make them bastard by themselves."

I'd say that millers without a cop and encryptor without any PTs fit that description - playing under false pretenses.

[Knightmare491]

I don't think you should assume that there should be an X role if there is a Y role in the game.

[Persivul]

I don't think you should assume that there should be an X role if there is a Y role in the game.

IMO in a normal, it's reasonable to believe that there's some way that the role you drew could be conceivably used. I don't want to be an encryptor in a setup with no chance that could possibly be of use.

[Isis]

Knightmare asked my opinion of this setup, for I don't know why.

This setup looks balanced to me. It leans in heavily on modwifom but not in any sort of malicious way. Something like Tracker against three Ninja Mafia would qualify as "normal bastard", playing one of the ends of the WIFOM of how many millers a given setup will include (with or without cops present) is not bastard. Both ends of the spectrum have to be exercised.

It can be unpalatable to be on the butt-end of that process in any particular game, that's one of the very reasons I'm not in the normal queue often. But it seems unremarkable that this passed NRG and doesn't represent much of a break from NK15 generally designing his setups well (it definitely wouldn't be my least favorite among his designs).

I think Miller itself is the outlier in being the highest WIFOM role currently permitted in normals, which is why I'd like to see them go, but if they are to stay then they should continue to be used dynamically in a way where player expectations can be thwarted.

[Not Known 15]

I don't think you should assume that there should be an X role if there is a Y role in the game.

IMO in a normal, it's reasonable to believe that there's some way that the role you drew could be conceivably used. I don't want to be an encryptor in a setup with no chance that could possibly be of use.

Actually, it is absolutely unreasonable to assume that the Encryptor part could ever be used; Ascetic prevents all actions that could lead to that.
A role can also be there because of rolecops if it is only permissible for town/non-town(e.g. the surviving miller here)
And lastly, a backup without any chance to backup because the role isnt there

has always been normal

:https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... did=136460

[Blair]

I enjoyed reading along!

Unpopular Opinion: Nothing in this setup actually impeded day play, and 11:2 instead of 10:3 should have been cause for scum to complain, not town.

To put it another way: Town could have won this game by lynching Puppy. Absolutely nothing about the setup prevented the town from scumreading Puppy.

[Drew-Sta]

Do you think that this game was not normal enough, then?

I would argue it wasn't normal at all.

Do you think that this game was not normal enough, then?

Yes. I started a thread in MD proposing that named townies not be allowed in normals.

Normal is defined for this site, and you were within those definitions, but consider normal usage of "normal." If you were describing mafia roles to someone new to the game, wouldn't you say that town encryptor normally implies the existence of a neighborizer? Or miller normally implies the existence of a cop? I would.

The definition of normal is wrong, IMHO.

That should tell you something.

Yeah that it was normal by name, but not by effect.

Yep

I hope, to absolute fuck, that your next actual mini normal is normal.

10 town, 3 scum, all vanilla.
Or pick one of the newbie formats to use.
Or just use watcher and tracker instead of a cop, and a jailkeeper instead of a doc or something.

But games like this one? Please don't ever run a game like this ever again. Normal should be relatively predictable and... normal. Not totally bastard and unpredictable.

100%.

[Xtoxm]

so this setup is getting a lot of flak. i think its fine.
i dont agree that the rolecop is a trap...it can conftown one of the millers.
thats actually really powerful.
if anything i think this setup looks hard for scum being 11:2, an ic and a few other town roles.
i dont have an issue with double miller. i think its fine to have duplicate roles other than vt.

[PranaDevil]

It con-tiens a miller only on its own death. If it stays alive all game, it hasn't conf-towned anything.

This game was a mess, top to bottom.

[Drew-Sta]

so this setup is getting a lot of flak. i think its fine.
i dont agree that the rolecop is a trap...it can conftown one of the millers.
thats actually really powerful.
if anything i think this setup looks hard for scum being 11:2, an ic and a few other town roles.
i dont have an issue with double miller. i think its fine to have duplicate roles other than vt.

I feel like you've completely ignored everything said.

Double miller is a trap.

Rolecop simply clears a miller, which means you out the cop, out the miller and if that happens by D2 (which is did in this game) you've lynched a miller, cleared a miller, used a role cop on a miller, and have an IC (which likely dies N1). That gives scum easy pickings for N2 / N3 kills, and throws out all NK analysis completely.

D1 lynch is not valid, as it's a mislynch on a miller, and the D2 is likely a crap shoot.

So no. Coming from someone who played the game, you're IMHO wrong.

[PranaDevil]

so this setup is getting a lot of flak. i think its fine.
i dont agree that the rolecop is a trap...it can conftown one of the millers.
thats actually really powerful.
if anything i think this setup looks hard for scum being 11:2, an ic and a few other town roles.
i dont have an issue with double miller. i think its fine to have duplicate roles other than vt.

Perfectly said
I feel like you've completely ignored everything said.

Double miller is a trap.

Rolecop simply clears a miller, which means you out the cop, out the miller and if that happens by D2 (which is did in this game) you've lynched a miller, cleared a miller, used a role cop on a miller, and have an IC (which likely dies N1). That gives scum easy pickings for N2 / N3 kills, and throws out all NK analysis completely.

D1 lynch is not valid, as it's a mislynch on a miller, and the D2 is likely a crap shoot.

So no. Coming from someone who played the game, you're IMHO wrong.

[PranaDevil]

Aha. I typed "perfectly said" at the wrong point... but what Drew posted is 100% accurate.

[UnaBombaH]

Yea, as if anyone cares about my input, but I think the game here fell for "too much weird" like implied earlier.
I'd actually argue that a 3 man scumteam would've been absolutely fine here, and potentially balanced the game way more FOR town.
Why?
Simply because our silly attempts at reads and analysis all hinged on the assumption that we were up against a 3man scumteam.
Reading associations post-flip is a big thing, and molds ones reads throughout the game.
So when someone suddenly throws in your face that the setup has -1 scum from what everyone initially assumed, it might potentially throw all reads out of the window as well.
It also gives scum another information-advantage that might help muddy up the connections and associations.
Wagon-analysis is way different.
Etc etc.

In my opinion, everything else (while janky and "goofy") was more or less fine.
I like it when a setup is different, but I think every single Mini Normal should be 10:3, and built as such.

[UnaBombaH]

And to be absolutely clear - I do not think NK15 did a poor job modding or even designing the setup.
In fact, kudos for the idea.
If you had made a setup like this for a 10:3, and I do think it would've been doable rather easily, I think this game would've been amazing.

I always bring up Blessed Mafia as an example for everything, but I really liked that game and all the janky roles and designs in it.
(the Mafia team was named Werewolves which made some people suggest multiball, there was a Cleric, TownUniversalBackup, a Miller....interesting stuff)

[Elena Fisher]

This game is not balanced.

One thing all of you need to look at here is this is a 'normal game.' Nothing about this set up is normal and that's an issue all by itself. If you want to be creative and do wacky weird set ups come to the mini theme. (That needs mods btw hi come join us <3 )

Along with that this set up is only 'balanced' if you look at it from the fact town might mess up. You should never base a setup on one side messing up. That's just bad design

[CantHateAPuppy]

two quick thoughts since i'm the one who had to play it as scum:

* 11:2 helped town more than scum because it limited my options. a lot of options like fake claims were closed to me because whatever lies i'd tell would have to survive to 3p lylo. obviously helped scum that i was the only one who knew for sure it was 11:2, but at best that makes it a wash

* i think the setup was "balanced" but swingy. the real problem with 11:2 is that the game can become much more unbalanced depending on who's active. 3 scum with one lurker is much less serious than 2 scum with one lurker. i think a lot of the division is that reason, the setup was balanced but not this particular game had a lot of subs that skewed it wrong

i thought it was fine, i don't hate it, but i don't think the setup made the game more fun

[popopopopopopo]

im happy to take credit for this win, well played me.