The Syndicate

games listed are not typically what I would prefer but then again, same could be said on several other forum sites.

Im a simple player and prefer fully open setups or at least only semi closed. Even if fully open, I prefer limited PR or mountainous without flips. I imagine hosting these are not as fun/rewarding as watching a custom scenario which you have lovingly crafted but cant be sure how people think about these things.

I sense the majority here prefer closed games or role madness style games so I just try to expand my mafia experience by playing in them. I enjoyed space invaders for example.

Hopefully this is not viewed as "venting frustration" but as an honest response to the question.

I havent been here for a long time so cant comment on what is going on or understand the context but I have seen mafia communities fizzle out or game volume drop. In my view, the typical reason is player X does not want to play with Player Y, however does not want to cause any issues so just remains silent as to reasoning and they dont sign up. If there are enough players that dont want to play with player Y, the game may struggle to start at all. Typically these preferences or reasons are not even communicated as nobody wants to start any discussions which may lead to hurt feelings. TS seems one of the overly nice and inclusive communities I have seen so this seems less likely but my cynical nature tells me this is always a possibility.

Alternatively you get a bunch of brand new/unknown players and maybe people dont want to sign up for a game because of the elevated risks associated with new players. Random abandonment, weak solving, low post count which gives nothing for people to work with etc. Again, I suspect this is less likely to be the case at TS due to the heavy emphasis on closed/complex setups which likely makes joining a game as a new player significantly less likely due to being more intimidating.

In the end mafia is a social game and its way more fun to play with friends so in the short term, if you were to create an entirely private lobby through invitation only, I suspect you would get some games starting very quickly. However in the long term, this is terrible for growing the community to replace people who stop playing mafia. Some middle ground where you run private lobbies in conjunction with public lobbies with a limited number of new people is my ideal world but typically I find about half the people find the idea of a private lobby inherently abhorent as a concept.

For the avoidance of doubt, there are no players I avoid (very limited number of games for me on TS and most are unknown to me anyway) but I have some I would enjoy playing with more and I would be more likely to sign up for if I saw they were potentially playing in it. I just raise this as a potential reason since "other" is listed and I havent seen anyone bring it up yet.