"Don't look too town as scum"

[Persivul]

The saying goes that if you look too town as scum you'll get lynched in lylo for still being alive.

Except, I don't think I've ever seen scum snow a town and then lose the game in lylo over it.

So, does this actually happen?

Not really.

In general, the reasoning is that scum don't target the towniest player for a NK, because that's the player who's most likely to be protected.

That doesn't work in open setups that don't have protectives. Still, I can't recall seeing it happen.

If I'm an investigative and a super townie person is still alive D3, I'm checking them N3.

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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.

[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.

[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.

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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.

[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.

[Persivul]

people still use the word sandbag?

Old people do.

[Persivul]

Consider this - "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."

My point is that you can't just reinvent yourself AS SCUM. Anything you do that will make it harder for you to be read as scum, will necessarily also make it harder for you to be read as town. The two go hand in hand.

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lol

In the sense that your scum game being more advanced than it was before makes you harder to townread, sure, but don't delude yourself that any of this involves not playing to wincon as best as they can as town

If you change your meta so that you're more difficult to identify as town, then yes, you're not playing as best you can as town.

[Persivul]

I'm pretty sure that's closer to suggesting people should compromise scumgames in order to be easier to read..?

No, that's suggesting that people should strive to improve their scum games by mimicking their town games as best as they can.

[Persivul]

wouldn't deliberately avoiding changing your meta as scum such that you are easier to identify as town be counted as playing towards a future win condition?

You're only easier to identify as town to the extent that you can't pretend to scum hunt when you're scum.

People seem to have forgotten this, but...that's the base concept of the game.

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Looking town takes priority over mimicking your towngame; if you have a scummy towngame, then as scum mimicking it you are going to get lynched.

Ideally, yes. But the fact is, on this site, if you play a scummy towngame long enough, then you don't get lynched for it, because meta.

[Persivul]

If you have a good scumgame but a really shitty towngame, analyze what in your scumgame is so good, and attempt to replicate it in your towngame.

You can achieve a high win rate as scum merely by having a shitty towngame for long enough.

Part of the problem is that people equate high win rate with good scumgame, when that's not necessarily the case.

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Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

There's no such thing as a good scum win rate in a vacuum.

I'd have more respect for someone with winrates of 60/60 town/scum, than someone with 30/100.

[Persivul]

Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

There's no such thing as a good scum win rate in a vacuum.

I'd have more respect for someone with winrates of 60/60 town/scum, than someone with 30/100.

What about 60/100

Cuz that's what you're bashing me for

A few years ago when I checked you, your scum was 100 but your town was well under 50 (around 30 IIRC). You've either improved your reads, or it's just a fluctuation based on sample.

But really, anyone with a 100 scum rate over enough games is necessarily sacrificing part of their town game, unless that's 100 too.

[Persivul]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame.

The last game I played with him, I noted he was doing scummy things, and people said

Yeah, but he does scummy things as town too

, and so gave it a pass.

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I really wish I knew what exactly it was about me that makes certain people so viscerally loathe me and feel the need to pull me down

LOL - seriously?

[Persivul]

Also my winrate was never 30% as town unless a very biased sample was chosen.

Look at your wiki page, 2015 games.

Also having an 100% winrate as scum does cost you town games... but am I supposed to gamethrow as scum to win more toen games?

No. You're supposed to play townier when you're town.