The Syndicate

A Person wrote: I am mostly amusing myself by pointing out one of the problems one has as a civ player.

Well, if you want to be tecnical all maifa (outside of PR reulsts and mod info) is WIFOM in itself.

A Person wrote:

ika wrote:

A Person wrote: What if yours, or others, posts in this thread are a part of your meta game meant to influence future mafia games?

Then we are not having a discussion and are going into a WIFOM argument.

Ah, I predicted this, to call something a WIFOM argument is the oldest meta game of all!

I edited my post to respond more. Im not really caring about the WIFOM argument or if this thread does make change, im here for the discussion. IF it makes change more power to the thread. If not, well we had a nice dicussion

A Person wrote: What if yours, or others, posts in this thread are a part of your meta game meant to influence future mafia games?

Then we are not having a discussion and are going into a WIFOM argument.

I do think that the discussion will change how mafia games are designed overall (as JJJ pointed out with his site before it did something of the sort) but rereading your point, i would not be surprised if something comes of this thread

A Person wrote:

ika wrote:On the meta issue: i agree if people use it too much that they will get overtaken one game. Funny enough as much as i say i use meta, i only use it very little. If anything i use it as a baseline to start a read. Even with silver, i dont like to think when it comes ot reading her its not about meta, but about her as a person

What if this is part of your meta game?

Clarify?

On the meta issue: i agree if people use it too much that they will get overtaken one game. Funny enough as much as i say i use meta, i only use it very little. If anything i use it as a baseline to start a read. Even with silver, i dont like to think when it comes ot reading her its not about meta, but about her as a person

On the trust issue: i have already touched on that and how town doesn't find town and just paranoias themselves to a conspiracy theory of the impossible scum teams

on silencer/restrictions: it should be a scum aligned role. Frankly there is literally no town utility to removing a town voice, right or not. The moment you remove a town's power to vote and speak you have basically removed an entire town player for that 48 hrs. Me and silver have talked about it extensively on other sites and after downtown abbey. It does nobody any real favors in long run. If the role is scum aligned i can 100% understand its utility but for town to not only remove speaking powers but voting powers seems like you have a negative utility role that should never be used.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:
I've pointed this out before, but (until Turf Wars), a mafia team of more than 4 players has never won on the Syndicate. The big teams always end up losing. It's the games where there's two mafia teams, or one mafia team and an Indy team, or several Indy roles and a mafia team, where the mafia usually wins. But such games are very common here.

Games with two mafia teams give mafia a legitimate chance to act like a civilian. They don't have to fake their scumhunting, because they do truly want to lynch players that civilians also want to lynch. I think this is another reason why mafia tend to win more here, since this format is very common.

I wonder about this though. I wonder if revealing alignments of nightkilled players in such games would offer some counterbalance to that. Not roles, just alignments.

I do have to say, when you make multi-ball game, it does get more swingy. I would say multiball can make the game much more scum-sided as well.

As for the revealing alignment. I would like to see that more, i think it would only be useful in a multiball game though.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I think a no info-dumping rule is a necessity in open setup games with a large number of special roles, especially when everyone has a special role. I don't think there's any way to arrange a game like that with roleclaiming and info-dumping without it being broken. That's a unique appeal to this culture because open setup role madness genuinely isn't even a thing in many other places.

Realistically i agree, but playing devil's advocate on this in general, that could also be a reasons why it causes so much strife for people. Not only that but into a bigger issue is getting people. As you said yourself, it isn't in many other places and could the the thing in itself that is a "deterrent" to people. If anything i would like to see more games that allow mass claim. And scums could be provided a false claim. Now it doesn't work in open as you are saying but in something like closed/semi-open

I don't think it's a necessity in a closed setup or in a vanilla-heavy open setup. It can still be employed though under certain circumstances. Any host who embraces that philosophy is fine by me. I do think that it might mean certain other tweaks will be needed though elsewhere in the rules or design to rebalance the game -- perhaps one less mafia member, or stronger town roles; the possibilities are endless.

I agree on this too, there are a near infinite possibilities but us hosts have to find the fine line between balanced and fun and sometimes i feel like that line gets blurred by what people are defining as "fun" and what is defined as "balanced" an example would be turf wars where IMO, i felt like town couldn't really win cus they had to lynch the gfs, but one GF was super town that he would never get lynched and the other was POEd out. After that town had no way of really "eliminating" the GF and win. While i do think the game was tons of fun (especially the prison yard mechanic), i felt like the ballance was a little skewed onto the scum side. I still need to go back and offer improvements and suggestions to what could help it run better.

S~V~S wrote:My roots are different than yours.

In any case, we did not allow it where I started, and the wins were balanced, so it is probably a combination of factors.

I don't disagree either, i think where i have that point is from my roots and a little bit of devil's advocate where on an objective view and what maifa is whtn stipped of everything.

Ill respond to JJJ tomorrw, i have an overnight to go to

S~V~S wrote:

Silverwolf wrote:I've been caught out by a guilty as scum when I was playing an excellent scum game and went down. The problem with not being able to claim is the cop could be lynched with several clears and no one would know. The reason for claiming is exactly this. It gives an advantage to town in a situation where they are losing more than winning. I do agree that scumhunting should prevail but one of the things that gives town an advantage in any game, is the ability to use a role and part of that ability is to be able to crumb your role, claim at L-1 and then town can decide if they believe it or not or scum can cc to try to get the lynch through. There are lots of ways to play this but this is a very fun, and very mafia like way to play. Plus, scum is the main term I know and doesn't matter to me if I call them baddies or not.

That's just it; it gives the town an advantage, an unfair advantage. This is just MY opinion, of course.

I think that's the point of the big debate that's gonna happen, IMO i don't think it gives town a huge advantage because of the bolded. Scum and town can do it. Not only that if a PR gets run to l-1 and lives. Mafia just NK it. if it gets lynched then mafia has advantage still.

But again it's all opinion on this big "claim/info dump". My only real "hard stance" is that if we are to talk in a mafia philosophy on what mafia is at its living roots, claim/info is allowed and encouraged.

thats my 2 cents on that matter though

S~V~S wrote:I think case building is better play than info dumping, and as Epi says, better sportsmanship. Baddies are not vermin to be caught; they are respected adversaries to be outwitted.

Still disagree overall but i'm not going to argue it that much cus its just an opinion and i'm not to say what i think is godsend (yes i know my gameplay is different and that's another thing). My view on it is that mafia at its core (and most of where my stances will end up coming from) is that mafia in general is about information and deceiving so claiming role/dumping info is part of mafia itself. Mafia has to try to make a claim that seems likely. If a game was literally a "follow the PR (cop)" then i would very much agree in the sense that it can be annoying and dumb.

The thing is that not everyone is convincing nor can they be. Some people (like me) have just played on guts and intuition. If they are right how do you explain it? If they have guts and check player X cus guts and find out that they are scum and nobody was listening last day phase, to me, they should be able to claim.

Epignosis wrote:One thing that is a major reason is that, traditionally here, civilians only won if they were alive and eliminated the Mafia. If civilians won dead or alive, I would have a lot more banners down there. However, the prevailing mindset among many has been, "As long as the lynch isn't me, everything is okay." This would lead to less than optimal play.

IMO, if people are doing suboptimal plays for a banner it seems kinda dumb. I played on other sites and never got banners. IMO being right should be vindictive enough, getting them lynched is a bonus as well. But if people are doing plays just for the said above they are indeed hurting their own faction and allow scums to get away with more.

As a Host, I am all but divested of that view, and most (not all ) of my games will reward players who put forth the effort to find Mafia with a victory if it is earned. It is discouraging to work your butt off and get killed, and thus be deprived of a win. I have found that my ability to engage in the hunt is unleashed when I don't have to worry about dodging the night kill too.

I have seen so many players who dumb down their play to not die. IMO that's a problem of the players and not the setup itself. When people become the default n1 kill they dumb down their play so they don't get targeted. However it then sets the standards elsewhere that EVERYONE can do it.

However, I am still adamant that an open setup game should be designed to punish info-dumpers, not reward them. If you get info from the host via your role, it's good sportsmanship in a fully open setup to make a proper case and spar with the person you are trying to get lynched.

Funny enough, most of my setups i create are designed to punish down for mass claiming. It looks like it helps town on paper but the reality is that scums will pull off more then cus they have the withheld info that town does not though mass claim.

I disagree about the making cases and sparing though. If you catch someone though role info and you can claim it, it's much more interesting as scum to try to wiggle out of it. I mean yes you're outed scum and maybe the best you can do it have a 1v1 on it. But if you get info and are able to claim it, you should as thats the optimal play instead of case making IMO.

S~V~S wrote:Well, perhaps some of us feel such is NOT the game. I have played with people who really actually seemed to think the baddies were actually bad, like they got RL mad and such. That's why I like that we use a silly name, baddies, rather than "scum". It's harder to get mad about being manipulated by "baddies", lol. But in any case I plan on beefing up civs more in upcoming games to counteract it a bit.

I think thats the thing, and the view i'm taking is more objective overall. If we strip mafia to its core and look at the evolution of it, mafia with no extras is town vs mafia (not scum). As mafia evolved it added cop/doc/roleblocker but claiming was still allowed. IMO, i feel like when you take away mass claim ability you have taken away what is part of the core mafia. Now, i'm not saying its bad that its disallowed, but i feel like it does mitigate what mafia is in a core fashion. As for the scum vs baddie argument, i find that scum is the more "catch all" term and what i have known for pretty much ever.

And yeah, back in the day, when my home forums first started with Lie Detectors and such, the first few games everyone was forced to make an LD statement right up front, and that sucked, so for a while they qualified it, like "No forced Statements", no "I am a civvie" etc., then Lie Detectors went out of fashion before I even started playing about 7 or 8 years ago. I saw my first LD at a different forum a few years later. Forcing people to claim or do anything is un-civvie, IMO. I am glad it isn't really done anymore.

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Well it was used on my homesite and we basically called it a nerfed sheriff (cop). If i use such roles i would make it clear what is allowed and whats not.

S~V~S wrote:I think our culture is some of it. It tends to be viewed as inherently unfair for a baddie who has played a flawless game to get outed because someone got a PM

We had this culture at our core communities, and the win ratio was pretty even, so I don't think that is all of it, though.

On the bolded, maybe so but that's also part of the game overall IMO. I believe i said it in rico's heist game that no matter how town someone looks POE will be an absolute in a PR sense and i believe i have mentioned that also in the heist that it can be a bit "unfair" but such is the game

As for the later, i grew up on a core where PRs were everything, i have long despised that after if became no fun. Even in downtown abbey where i said "all claim to be town" i only did it cus its optimal play. I was quite glad when elo shut it down.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:Civilians have been dominating the Heists here on the Syndicate though. That makes for an interesting counter-study.

I think with hesit, it is more straightforward and counteracts one of the most important things on the site, claiming and info dumping. As it was seen in the one that just finished, if info dumping wasn't allowed, scums might of been able to walk it out. WIth the ability to claim it made it impossible for scums to win

Honestly i would pick all of them except role usage. Mafia at its core is literally citizen/vanilla vs mafia. Role usages is just an added benefit to it all. If a game is dependent on role usage that's another thing but towns biggest power is its voice and its vote. Which could fall under game design.

That being said, i know me and silver has voiced this many times over, town doesn't find town nearly enough. Its more just "oh we just random lynch" while its not "random" to its word i feel like how a lot of the lynches go does boil down to random in a sense 2 game i can recall (turf and champ) we had CFD, now both landed on scum but it does kinda lead to an element of "random". Which ties into town play performance.

I think the most compelling thing though is not being able to role claim/info dump. While i can understand why its not allowed due to basically all unique roles, it does hinder a lot of towns abilities to play in general. I mean using downtown abbey as an example, if the BTCS checker got a positive results, it can't just claim it which hinders town. IMO i would like to see more setups that allow mass claims or claiming in general.