Mafiascum.net

innocentvillager wrote:1) When did you start looking at peoples' game histories (like before the game started, during the game, right after it started)? I'm guessing you're referring to the players in this game?

I started earlier today after the game started because I saw an interesting discussion in another ongoing game where people were mentioning (and linking) other games that they had played together and thought hey that's a pretty good idea. So far I've only had the time to look through Transcend's stuff, since 14 was one of the most neutral looking posts I've ever seen which struck me as odd.

2) What are you impressions from what you've seen from other people?

I'm assuming that threads that are in "endgame" are considered to be over here, so please let me know if I can't link them in the future! They all have the reveals done already so that means it's not ongoing to me.

Anyway the threads that were particularly interesting to me are this one and this one, both of which Transcend was a VT. The first one also contained Karnos but I haven't analyzed his posts as much yet because I haven't had the time and he's literally only made the first post so far.

In the other threads, most of his posts are fairly rapid-fire around 6am/6pm PST and rarely more than a few sentences long. There are a couple exceptions, often when there's been several pages of discussion missed, but there are also a number of posts that are a single word. They also tend to be fairly aggressive.

In this thread, 2 of his 4 posts show considerably more effort than I would have expected based on reading the others (9 and 23), one of them is one of the most neutral posts I've seen (14), and the other is just a tack on to a larger post which also kinda just repeats what IV said in his previous reads post 24. The timing of the posts is also a bit unusual, with only one being around the 6pm/am bracket that I was noticing as a trend in the other games.

To me, this is implying more effort than normal, which implies scum.

I'll be on sporadically over the next few hours, otherwise probably won't see me til tomorrow night.

hi joushi (nice avatar!!!) sorry you didn't like that post. however, it was just a brief phone post from work to make sure that nothing silly happened such as iron getting lynched. i'm not against bws i'm really not, but i'm against lolhammers this early in the game.

Anyways I actually agree more or less with all of IV's townreads thus far, however his vote on karnos looks a tad bit opportunistic as I feel karnos' post wasn't super alignment indicative.

In post 25, Joushi wrote:To me, this is implying more effort than normal, which implies scum.

Yeah, no.

Just a massive shout here - actions tend to be NAI (non-alignment-indicative) because anyone of any alignment can do anything and in some messed up mind have it make sense based on context and personal opinion.

In post 28, Skold wrote:

In post 25, Joushi wrote:To me, this is implying more effort than normal, which implies scum.

Yeah, no.

I understand what he means by this tho. I've noticed in experienced that OVERALL (not all the time) scum tend to be a bit more tryhard than town because of several reasons.

1. Scum have to put up a fake persona. Town can be genuine and carefree.

2. Scum already know who's who so they have to create scenarios to make everyone believe that someone they frame is scum. Which involves more effort.

3. IMO a scum win is more satisfying than a town win. I've had an epic town win and an epic scum win on this site. I can say I tried much much more on my scum win but I tried really hard in both games. Anyways, being able to say "haha I fooled you all mwhahahahaahha" is much more satisfying than "haha i found you out better luck next time ". However this is just me.

In post 28, Skold wrote:Yeah, no.

It's not enough for me to hammer someone, but it's more than enough to vote for them in RVS. I'm not sure what you mean with "actions tend to be NAI" because you're kinda claiming we can't make reads (not reliable reads, but reads at ALL). Appealing to WIFOM is... weird since it just means "hey if we assume everyone is playing perfectly it's just a 50/50" which relies on the flawed assumption that everyone is playing perfectly. I don't agree with that statement at all.

In post 30, Transcend wrote:I understand what he means by this tho. I've noticed in experienced that OVERALL (not all the time) scum tend to be a bit more tryhard than town because of several reasons.

Your defense of me accusing you is... interesting. I'm not sure what to make of it honestly. I'm keeping my eye on you, based on what I've seen, you seem to be playing outside your MO.

Also thanks! My avi's a picture of my fluffball

Well I defended myself because I felt that the post COULD be seen as neutral but I wanted to explain how it WASN'T neutral.

In post 31, Joushi wrote:It's not enough for me to hammer someone, but it's more than enough to vote for them in RVS. I'm not sure what you mean with "actions tend to be NAI" because you're kinda claiming we can't make reads (not reliable reads, but reads at ALL). Appealing to WIFOM is... weird since it just means "hey if we assume everyone is playing perfectly it's just a 50/50" which relies on the flawed assumption that everyone is playing perfectly. I don't agree with that statement at all.

?? I'm not operating on the assumption that everyone is playing perfectly. Quite the opposite, most anti-town players are in fact town. It's why I will no longer take being anti-town as good enough a reason to lynch someone post D1. And only with D1 because we really don't know anything.

In post 30, Transcend wrote:

In post 28, Skold wrote:

In post 25, Joushi wrote:To me, this is implying more effort than normal, which implies scum.

Yeah, no.

I understand what he means by this tho. I've noticed in experienced that OVERALL (not all the time) scum tend to be a bit more tryhard than town because of several reasons.

1. Scum have to put up a fake persona. Town can be genuine and carefree.

2. Scum already know who's who so they have to create scenarios to make everyone believe that someone they frame is scum. Which involves more effort.

3. IMO a scum win is more satisfying than a town win. I've had an epic town win and an epic scum win on this site. I can say I tried much much more on my scum win but I tried really hard in both games. Anyways, being able to say "haha I fooled you all mwhahahahaahha" is much more satisfying than "haha i found you out better luck next time ". However this is just me.

Town don't necessarily HAVE to be active but wanting to play the game is NAI. Activity really, REALLY shouldn't be used for tells for a couple reasons.
It is the easiest thing to fake in both directions.
And if you punish activity you basically destroy mafia as a game.

Okay townread on Joushi.

Effort is definitely not necessarily alignment indicative, I would definitely agree with Skold. It depends on the player. Just because Transcend is putting more effort into this than you saw in his past two games, doesn't mean he's more likely to be scum necessarily. But it's a good observation.

Now, if he continues to play completely differently in this game from either of those two towngames you mentioned and somewhat similarly to a scumgame or two, then it's worth scumreading him or noting him for.

In post 30, Transcend wrote:

In post 28, Skold wrote:

In post 25, Joushi wrote:To me, this is implying more effort than normal, which implies scum.

Yeah, no.

I understand what he means by this tho. I've noticed in experienced that OVERALL (not all the time) scum tend to be a bit more tryhard than town because of several reasons.

1. Scum have to put up a fake persona. Town can be genuine and carefree.

2. Scum already know who's who so they have to create scenarios to make everyone believe that someone they frame is scum. Which involves more effort.

3. IMO a scum win is more satisfying than a town win. I've had an epic town win and an epic scum win on this site. I can say I tried much much more on my scum win but I tried really hard in both games. Anyways, being able to say "haha I fooled you all mwhahahahaahha" is much more satisfying than "haha i found you out better luck next time ". However this is just me.

My response to your 1 and 2 is that yes, scum probably have to invest more time/effort into a game, but they will generally spend more time and effort than a townie would per post. For example, I post pretty similarly in both my scum and town games activity-wise, but writing up posts is a lot more difficult for me than writing up town posts. So while scum games actually take up more time for me as a whole since I am fabricating each post carefully, it rarely will show through my activity level. Of course, I am only one example, but my point is that I think you may be conflating behind-the-scenes effort with surface-activity.

I agree with 3 actually in that scum wins are more satisfying than town wins, but I still think it is outweighed by other factors, or at least balanced out.

Regardless of all of this, I don't believe that an in-depth theory discussion on this will be important. I think it's a good idea to treat activity in and of itself as NAI, but if coupled with other tells, it may be important.

I'm more interested in posts like this:

Transcend wrote:Anyways I actually agree more or less with all of IV's townreads thus far, however his vote on karnos looks a tad bit opportunistic as I feel karnos' post wasn't super alignment indicative.

It looks like you voted me for an unstated reason, but now you're justifying it here. What made my vote opportunistic? I'm not seeing it.

In post 25, Joushi wrote:I'm assuming that threads that are in "endgame" are considered to be over here, so please let me know if I can't link them in the future! They all have the reveals done already so that means it's not ongoing to me.

Yep, if mod has revealed everything and declared a winner the game is over!

In post 18, Soula wrote: Karnos and Skold seem kind of suspicious voting off the bat like that, unless there's something about this that I'm not getting. That said, Karnos accusing someone of being scum without them even posting is really weird. Either they aren't thinking before they post or they are scum and made a little slip at the beginning. hmmm. I'll be paying attention to them.

You should be paying attention to everyone.

As the game goes, the first few pages of a thread are usually dominated by "RVS", Random Voting Stuff. Typically nobody will ever have a super strong real scum read at this point, nonetheless it's an important part of the game. If you don't participate, then it stifles discussion and doesn't give as much stuff to read from to make more serious votes later in the game.

That said, there is sort of an oxymoron in the meta, as some players will scream loud and clear that you should NEVER vote someone unless you think they are scum. Taken to the extreme, that sort of thinking would seem to indicate that RVS is a bad idea, and you shouldn't participate in it, yet without going past the RVS stage there is very little to read anyone on.

That said, my personal perspective is that voting someone, whether town or scum, is a good thing early in the game, because you can get a wide range of reactions depending on how much pressure they feel. In some cases I'll even vote someone I *think* is town, because I want to confirm my thoughts. Perhaps ironically, voting for pressure doesn't provide any benefit at all if you admit you are actually just voting for pressure, so even in those cases I'm not going to limply vote and say something to undermine my attempt at creating pressure.

In post 35, Skold wrote: Town don't necessarily HAVE to be active but wanting to play the game is NAI. Activity really, REALLY shouldn't be used for tells for a couple reasons.
It is the easiest thing to fake in both directions.
And if you punish activity you basically destroy mafia as a game.

Ok I understand where our disagreement comes from. I'd keyed on in the word "actions" you used in in 29, as opposed to the word "activity". I don't want to punish people simply for being active, that's not fun and definitely this early in the game isn't worth lynching someone over whatsoever. However people's ACTIONS definitely are potential lynch reasons. People's ACTIVITY generally aren't. Though the fact that ENT and Rar haven't shown their faces at all is disappointing. It doesn't look like either of them have made any visible posts outside of the recruitment thread though.

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It's also interesting to me that both @IC and @Transcend pegged Soula as town based off her only post 18, where as @Stove (who hasn't posted since Soula), @Skold, and @Karnos haven't really commented on it at all. It mostly reads as newb-town to me at best (and most likely), but I feel like newb-scum would also just be afraid of getting lynched D1 and I'm just getting a null read off of it. Care to explain your thought process at all?

I think the afk are scum hoping we Lynch ourselves :3

In post 40, ironstove wrote:I think the afk are scum hoping we Lynch ourselves :3

Hey Stove, I understand you're new (and my strongest townread at the moment), and I'd like to ask a little more from your posts. A lack of content in this post isn't really helpful other than showing activity, and our greatest weapon is information. The more information we have available the easier it is to find scum.

There's a couple ways you could help us with your next post. You could start pressuring people by asking them questions, you could give us your current take on what many of the players involved have already said and whether you think they're town or scum, and you could answer some of the questions people have already asked. Some of the questions that would be helpful for us include:

1. Was there a reason behind the relatively unprompted VT claim?
2. What is your take on differing activity levels of players between games?
3. Do you think it's helpful for us to lynch today or not? Why or why not?
4. What is your opinion of Soula? Both Innocent Villager (who I accidentally referred to as IC instead of IV in my previous post) and Transcend seemed to assume that Soula is town with very little information, where I don't think we have enough information to make that judgement call off of her first and only post so far.

Knowledge is power! Ask questions, or pose questions for yourself and answer them!

chill it with the walls please

a wall every once in a while is fine, but walling in every single post is going to make some players (me) not want to read you.

try condensing your posts

In post 41, Joushi wrote:who I accidentally referred to as IC instead of IV in my previous post

I am indeed IV the IC

Transcend wrote:chill it with the walls please

a wall every once in a while is fine, but walling in every single post is going to make some players (me) not want to read you.

try condensing your posts

Lol.

Honestly, I think walls are fine if they contain a lot of game-advancing content—how is spreading the same stuff out over multiple posts in any way better?

I completely agree that, if there's a lot of fluff in there, walls induce apathy. But I see no reason to "chill it with the walls" if people can ensure that their walls have lots of good content. You not wanting to read people solely for "walling" kind of just sounds like laziness.

In post 41, Joushi wrote:

In post 40, ironstove wrote:I think the afk are scum hoping we Lynch ourselves :3

Hey Stove, I understand you're new (and my strongest townread at the moment), and I'd like to ask a little more from your posts. A lack of content in this post isn't really helpful other than showing activity, and our greatest weapon is information. The more information we have available the easier it is to find scum.

There's a couple ways you could help us with your next post. You could start pressuring people by asking them questions, you could give us your current take on what many of the players involved have already said and whether you think they're town or scum, and you could answer some of the questions people have already asked. Some of the questions that would be helpful for us include:

1. Was there a reason behind the relatively unprompted VT claim?
2. What is your take on differing activity levels of players between games?
3. Do you think it's helpful for us to lynch today or not? Why or why not?
4. What is your opinion of Soula? Both Innocent Villager (who I accidentally referred to as IC instead of IV in my previous post) and Transcend seemed to assume that Soula is town with very little information, where I don't think we have enough information to make that judgement call off of her first and only post so far.

Knowledge is power! Ask questions, or pose questions for yourself and answer them!

1. Well, I was 2 from hammer so I decided to role claim because I didn't want to wait until I was 1 from hammer and accidentally got meme lynched in my first game here.

2. I think people are always evolving and trying to improve their play styles. Maybe a person lost a few games and after analyzing they decided that being too active gave too much unnecessary attention, so they decided to tone it down, and vice versa. I don't read too much into changed activity necessarily being reflective of a changed faction or role.

3. If we can get by with a no-lynch then I'd like to go that route, generally I think it's a very mafia-esque thing to push for a policy lynch when it's not going to a plurality vote when EOD arrives. The longer the game goes the harder it becomes for scum to hide as they need to constantly tweak the smallest details behind their lies and it becomes easier and easier to find the loose thread in their story that unravels everything. With that said, I see days are going to be up to 2 weeks here so I could understand doing a policy no-lynch majority before that time arrives.

4. Not sure about him. I'm not very good at reading people LOL... My greatest strength and weakness is that regardless of whether I'm town or 3rd party trying to scum hunt, my reads have always been horribly off, my tunnels always lead to towns getting killed (This works out great when I'm mafia though!), and I usually figure out who the scum is from POE if I make it to end game... This is actually what I'm hoping to improve the most in my mafia game because stronger players are always able to sniff me out by end game if I am mafia, and I'm still getting fooled by the same players end-game.

I won't be shy about applying pressure though, but with that said I guess you can assume that whoever I am become certain is scum is probably going to turn out to be a town because I'm finding that the 'scum slips' which I point out are actually lazy/bad town players. Feel free to critique the posts I iso on, I'd appreciate knowing what it is I'm doing wrong.

In post 23, Transcend wrote:ironstove is solid town, if he's mafia a big fat loss is something I endure this game.

Trying to pocket a new player already?

In post 23, Transcend wrote: With that said: Don't claim your role unless you're at L-1 (1 vote away from being lynched). Especially if the vote is in RVS. None of the 3 votes on you were legitimate votes and now scum have a better idea on who the PR's (power roles i.e. non vanilla townies) are.

Scum read. A vote is still a vote and waiting to claim 1 before hammer is risky. Pushing town players to wait until 1 from hammer is scum because on the off chance that mafia haven't voted yet and can hammer in a lynch, they will and can blame the town players for starting the train and optimally get another mislynch set up.

Also, claiming VT is nowhere near as bad as claiming a PR. If I was a PR, I would still claim VT. If I was a VT, I would claim a PR in some situations to in order to bait a shot from scum. I very well can still be a PR or VT, so claiming VT is meaningless and is equivalent to stating that I'm simply 'not scum'.

In post 23, Transcend wrote: Scum ALREADY have a significantly ENORMOUS higher amount of information than town does since they know everyone's alignment in this game. It's best to withhold as much information from the scumteam as possible (i.e. claims) or else that just makes their win a lot easier.

Disagree again. Claiming is the right move in some situations, and having this binary view is either very weak town mentality or a scum play to push onto the newer players.

In post 42, Transcend wrote:chill it with the walls please

a wall every once in a while is fine, but walling in every single post is going to make some players (me) not want to read you.

This post is another scum tell, trying to silence other players who are inciting activity and pulling players in to be engaged... Other posts you've made have come off scummy as well.

Based on this, you're scum... I'll let the rest of the town decide if they agree with me on this or not. Seems like very straightforward scum play.

VOTE: Transcend

In post 42, Transcend wrote:chill it with the walls please

Sorry, this style of play was ingrained in me to start, I'll try and reduce length.

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@Stove, good job on the content with that post! I'm rather tired, so I'll see you all tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get our 2 missing members by then!

In post 45, ironstove wrote:Disagree again. Claiming is the right move in some situations, and having this binary view is either very weak town mentality or a scum play to push onto the newer players.

This is how like 90+% of mafiascum players view claiming. You can disagree alright, but scumreading because someone buys into a very common practice seems silly.

In post 43, innocentvillager wrote:You not wanting to read people solely for "walling" kind of just sounds like laziness.

I know you're addressing Transcend but honestly brevity is rather key. If you can say the same thing with less words