The Syndicate

dunya wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:16 pm
JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:08 pm
dunya wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:48 am thanks for doing that jay.

when do vocaroo links expire?
Usually after a couple of months or so.
k.

i might be crazy enough to download them all then and just have them.

Hoarder!

dunya wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:48 am thanks for doing that jay.

when do vocaroo links expire?

Usually after a couple of months or so.

00:04 - Epignosis and the host posts
14:31 - Jay and dunya fist fight on Day 1
24:03 - Marmot leaves a legacy
26:28 - Tink's heroic sacrifice turns the game around
33:49 - Simon is tired of his sister's lies
35:59 - Made's rap [sort of] rebuttal
40:24 - speedchuck's southern draaawwwl
43:54 - The civilians use process of elimination
51:44 - Made needs some motivation
54:23 - DrWilgy and RadicalFuzz being evil however the hell they please
56:42 - Elohcin rightly defends her son's honor
59:52 - The civilian role claims
1:03:37 - Credits

Click to access YouTube page and there are direct links to each of those times in the video in the description.

The highlights are being assembled.

[mention]DrWilgy[/mention]
[mention]dunya[/mention]
[mention]Elohcin[/mention]
[mention]Kylemii[/mention] 1
[mention]Kylemii[/mention] 2
[mention]Made[/mention]
[mention]Marmot[/mention]
[mention]RadicalFuzz[/mention]
[mention]Simon[/mention]
[mention]Sloonei[/mention]
[mention]speedchuck[/mention]
[mention]Tink[/mention]

Hey gang, I'm going to assemble a highlights video for the game. It's pointless to save and compile every single recording, because nobody on this planet or any other will ever listen to that. If you could come up with 1-5 posts or so that you think are your best/most important/most interesting/most whatever, I will include them in the highlights. Also, if there is any particular posts from other(s) you absolutely want to see included, say so.

Kylemii wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 11:24 pm like the moral of this story is literally just "please try not to post so much in future vocaroo style games" text based mafias have nothing to do with it, and also it's basically not relevant to anything important also, again, to reiterate, I love you both.

I know what you mean, Kylenator, no worries. I have heard many similar sentiments expressed though after regular text games too, because I am capable of blowing those the hell up too (1,450 posts in a game anyone?

).

I hope this doesn't look like some dramatic Thing. I dig what y'all are saying, and even if I don't entirely agree I am willing to chill out a bit. The new semester is starting soon anyway.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:54 pm Jay, at the same time, I feel like a dick.

No need. I want the people playing Mafia on The Syndicate to enjoy it, and if enough people can't keep the pace I set (understandably), then that's a problem. Besides, I would like to see other players beyond the usual suspects try to step into the spotlight and lead the charge. I'm sure someone out there wants to give it a shot.

Thanks y'all. I'll be in two game simultaneously pretty soon, and that'll be a good opportunity to tone it down and see how it feels. I mean, I've done it before, but I'll try again.

And if it's unclear: civilians give up when they can't keep up, and they win with me anyway. They have less fun, the game is still won (usually).

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:11 pm 1. How many times have you dominated a thread as a civilian and lost?

Now don't concern yourself with losing. Instead, concern yourself with this:

2. How many civilians gave up because they couldn't keep up with you?

1. Considerably fewer than I've won.

2. A non-zero number. I'm sure if the general population here was asked that question, I'd see numerous hands raised. This is the argument I think has merit, not the one disputing that more activity is better than less activity for civilians in terms of win probability. I don't want people to have no fun. It is frustrating that my kind of fun doesn't seem to mesh with other people's fun. If I am winning a bunch of games and my own teammates don't enjoy the process, then it isn't worth it. There are multiple alternatives, and all of them ask me to have less fun.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:04 pm I know you do.

What if everyone could keep pace with the thread though? What would happen?

If they can keep the pace in a fast-paced game? They have more fun and the civilians have an advantage.

If they cannot keep the pace in a fast-paced game? They have less fun and the civilians have a lesser [but still present] advantage.

If they can keep the pace in a slow-paced game? They have more fun and the civilians are at a disadvantage.

If they cannot keep the pace in a slow-paced game? They have less fun and the civilians are at a greater disadvantage.

I am afraid the problem here is that JJJ fun isn't often compatible with everyone fun.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:01 pm
JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:00 pm
Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:47 pmListen more than you talk.
There's a place for that.

If everybody does it, there's no thread.
Listen more than you talk.

Not "not talk."

That's what I mean.

If everybody listens more than they talk, then the thread by nature must creep along at a snail's pace because everybody is too inclined to listen and too disinclined to speak. There must be something to listen to. I firmly believe that the listeners benefit from having at least one loudmouth, because the thread builds itself upon that content and the responses it facilitates. Without the loudmouth, we get the Gatsby game.

Is it harder to keep up in a Vocaroo game than in a text game? Absolutely.

Do I hear this crap in and after text games just the same? Absolutely.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:47 pmListen more than you talk.

There's a place for that.

If everybody does it, there's no thread.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:20 pm
JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:16 pm
Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:32 pm Your second scenario sounds just like Vocaroo Mafia 1.
Exactly.
Do you think I won Vocaroo Mafia I because thread activity was low?

It's not the sole reason you won, but it helped you. A more active thread facilitates a stronger civilian core (given enough opportunities with posts in the thread, they're going to tend to find each other more easily), and that will leave the people with no real civilian credit (such as but not limited to the guy with 20-some posts only providing half-relevant songs) exposed by process of elimination.

If you'd played in this game the exact same way you played in that one, you'd have been one of the people stuck in the POE pile as a candidate to be lynched.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:32 pm Your second scenario sounds just like Vocaroo Mafia 1.

Exactly.

Kylemii wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:37 pm but who cares that much about winning, really? winning is only a consequence of the game, not the goal. like.... sure winning is great, but if you play mafia only to win then you'll only get to have fun half of the time.

It's the goal for me. Losing can be plenty of fun too, but only if I know that I did the best I could and was just beaten. There's respect and dignity in that. I wouldn't have much fun taking plays off on purpose and hurting my faction in the process.

I realize most people probably don't play this game with the same competitive mindset that I do, but that's where I draw my fun.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 7:41 pm Question: How would you have approached this game as a civilian if you had only thirty minutes a day to devote to it? Do you think you would get lynched far more easily than if you had more time?

This depends upon how you're framing the question. I'll consider two scenarios, compared against scenario 0 (the real game we just played).

1.) I only have 30 minutes per day to devote to the game, but everything else is the same in a vacuum (implying that someone else is posting as frequently as I really did instead of me)
- I play it like Sloonei did, by operating purely with the material in front of me in real-time. I immediately forget about trying to catch up or keep up, because it is impossible and pointless.
- My chance of being lynched is greater than it was in the game we just played. The chance of the hypothetical other JJJ being lynched is lower in my stead. We break even.

2.) I only have 30 minutes per day to devote to the game, and nobody else is posting as frequently as I really did in my stead. The entire game moves more slowly in general.
- I am better able to keep up and play in the best analytic style I can manage. dunya's post count also plummets relatively speaking, because in reality many of our posts reflected each other, and if one of us significantly drops then the other logically follows.
- There is significantly less material to judge, other players have significantly less to talk about (because hundreds of posts are being removed from the equation), and my reads inherently become less concrete. Players don't have enough credit to be confidently reduced to the necessary POE size, and the chance of a civilian victory dramatically decreases. The mafia team can maintain the same general pace as any civilian if not eclipse that pace, and control of the thread is either shared with them or surrendered to them.

In #1, I am essentially Sloonei. My chance of being lynched is a bit greater than in Scenario 0, but my chance to win the game is close to equivalent to that of Scenario 0.

In #2, I am a half-assed, time-condensed JJJ in a slow game thread. My chance of being lynched is still a bit greater than in Scenario 0, and my chance to win the game is lower than in Scenarios 0 or 1.

Kylemii wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 7:13 pm or maybe you guys could just.... take all the constructive feedback to heart and learn from it

Truly, arguments about what makes the game fun or not fun -- those are meaningful and I will listen to them.

Good luck to anyone though trying to convince me that what dunya and I did in this game doesn't help civilians win the game. It isn't about voice versus text, it's about how the game of Mafia works on a message board forum.

If there's a Vocaroo 3 I'll just host it. The people cannot handle my intensity.

*bathes in a tub of victory medals, half-listening to dissenters*

As I see it:

Slow games are friendlier for people with less time. They're also friendlier for the bad guys. If I'm not a bad guy myself, fuck that.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:36 am I only mean that I could see a civilian shutting down and and not being productive simply from lack of time.

I agree. That happened in this game to some extent. Enough civilians stayed the course though that the pool of slackers was so narrow that solving the game was simple.

To be honest, I've had more than a couple games, civilian and non, wherein I never completely read the thread. It wasn't necessary or important, and the pertinent stuff came during ISO reviews or the like anyway.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:26 am I have never lost as mafia because of post counts.

I HAVE won before because civilians value post counts.

There are exceptions to every rule. If you judge mafia teams in general by your own achievements, I think you're making a mistake. Also, I consider you to be a very skilled bad guy. I have never seen you detonate a post count list by tripling or quadrupling second place.

Sloonei wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:12 am And 2. "Catching up" is overrated. I missed somewhere around 10 pages of action in the middle of this game. I made no effort to get caught up on it, and instead just started developing fresh reads based on what was happening in the present moment, and those reads turned out to be absolutely spot on. Compare that to my reads from before, when my proposed scum team consisted of Speedchuck, Marmot, and Elohcin.

I'm gonna plant my flag in this latter point til the day I die because I'm still salty about the nasty attitude I received from players in the Champs game two years ago when I tried to employ the method. "How can you play the game if you don't read the thread, Sloonei!?"

Agreed. Trying to play catch up in a game that is moving fast is a self-defeating waste of time. While one spends the time reading everything, the thread continues to inflate and the completion of the task becomes more implausible. Frankly, even if someone manages to read everything after missing a lot, is that player really going to absorb and process that material effectively or is it just going to drizzle out of their minds as quickly as it enters? I suspect the latter is truer.

If you fall way behind, you're better off jumping in as the action continues and working with the discussions at hand. If you missed some critical thing, someone will surely tell you about it.

I was on the other side too when the same thing wasted my team in Mountain Mafia. We didn't just lose that game because of balance problems. The civilians washed us out by playing as hard as they could. My entire team, including my postaholic ass, failed to find a place in the top ten of post count. We were exposed.

Spamming the thread just to assure the post count rockets isn't the method. The posts still have to have some kind of function. Even repetitive posts have an important function, and in this case it was teamwork.

I can agree that it might annoy civilians who can't keep the pace. It infuriates mafia who can't keep the pace.

Kylemii wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 12:26 am I complained about Dunia and Jay earlier with their close to 2 hours of content each per day phase, but now.... I really do think creating an atmosphere where the mafia members couldn't catch up was at least somewhat instrumental in this victory.

It's one of the easiest ways to filter out mafia members in any game. Vocaroo made it even more pronounced.

The faster the pace, the more difficult the game for the bad guys. It's just the way the game works.

I kept my recordings concise and efficient.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:49 pm
JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:44 pm Note: the first Vocaroo game here covered about 400 active posts and elapsed 5.5 hours recording time. If the averages hold, that would project to 21.5 hours recording time in this game.
I refuse to put this game into one video. I refuse.

I only let my kids play because I wasn't expecting so many fucking audio posts, and so much dead air from players.

I might be bored enough to do it before the Vocaroo links expire, though it'd be across multiple videos this time. I doubt anyone will ever care to listen through them though.

Maybe a highlights video.

Note: the first Vocaroo game here covered about 400 active posts and elapsed 5.5 hours recording time. If the averages hold, that would project to 21.5 hours recording time in this game.

dunya wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:41 pm Also who the fuck would do that??????

Oh, nobody I guess...

Kylemii wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:30 pm Poll is still open so I'm voting Jay.

You and dunya go ahead. Eventually someone might run through this game to compile full-year statistics, and they'll think you both voted wrongly for me while the rest of us got it right, and your numbers will be shit.

Note: this is the fourth Vocaroo game I've been a part of (played twice, once mafia and once civilian; hosted twice), and it's the first time the civilians have won.

dunya wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:06 pm
JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:56 pm Jay babbles about the game for 8.5 minutes
wow how impatient are you? I listened to Epi's posts as he intended for us to listen to them and enjoyed them. It's called self restraint, learn it.

My lack of self-restraint is my greatest civilian weapon.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:10 pm A word on Tink lying.

That was entirely her idea.

She is a liar. She's gotten in trouble for that. Many times.

So when I explained how heists work, she of course HAD to lie about something.

She even explained it to me this way: "I have to lie so the superheroes don't die."

You got it, gal. You got it.

So she lied and claimed cop and picked speedchuck and that's my girl.

A liar at heart.

I have no idea where she gets it.

So glad my attempt to check her failed.

Kylemii wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:02 pm Good game, that was fun. I was apprehensive about playing the game at all because I hate hearing my voice recorded and I have like... extreme anxiety about leaving voice mails. The reason why my posts ended up so long and ramble-y was because I decided it would be better to just say shit and not worry about how it sounded. My first few recordings were probably recorded ten or twenty times to get them right lol.

If an outside perspective means anything: you needn't worry about that. Your voice didn't sound weird or awkward or any such thing, you sounded perfectly fine. It's okay to be a bit rambly in a game like this which by its very nature encourages a lot of thinking aloud like that.