The Syndicate

Which doesn’t even cover Sabie winning coin flips.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:23 pm

Epignosis wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2019 10:35 pm Civilians needed nutella dead (not mafia).

Civilians needed Lunalee dead (not mafia).

Civilians needed sprityo dead (not mafia).

Civilians needed five more people dead.

That's eight.

That's too many.

I agree.

I’m not saying I deserved a win because my reads were pretty well junk except on Nutella.

I think there were too many antitown roles compared to town ones.

DDL: Town has 5 blocks so they could have stopped some kills and that’s balance.

Sure, but the town spent all game blocking me.

And if they had blocked some kills, that really would have frustrated the mafia, as I was highly frustrated at the labyrinth of ways to stop kills in Hogwarts that the mafia had to tiptoe around.

Basically, I’m saying this should have been a mountainous game.

Now excuse me. I have to get back to writing my multiball game with a bunch of blocks and a high scum to town ratio.

Here's the thing though.

Mafia needed nutella dead, it was in our wincon.

Mafia needed Luna dead, wincon.

Mafia needed sprityo dead, wincon again.

So I'm not sure what that original post by Epi means.

But anyway, it was a fun game even though we were biting our nails through the end.

It’s also horseshit for a host to repeatedly repeat that I broke the rules and should have been modkilled and when I ask him when that happened his answer is “I don’t know.”

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:33 pm It’s also horseshit for a host to repeatedly repeat that I broke the rules and should have been modkilled and when I ask him when that happened his answer is “I don’t know.”

Well my post was a reply to Dom's complaint that mafia knew he was Agatha.

If you guys are mad mafia learned all your secrets, ask them how they did it.

I didn't modkill you because, like you said, I didn't even see where you broke the rules.

I just don't want to hear complaints about mafia picking out civs to roleblock and then you trying to convince me that you didn't reveal your identities. At some point you did. Maybe do a better job of hiding them next time.

I mean, Dom keeps saying mafia had extra information but that is factually wrong. Mafia's only source of information was killed night 1.

It's fun to try to pin on me the fact mafia figured out your identities, but it won't change the reality that they did it without my help.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:47 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:33 pm It’s also horseshit for a host to repeatedly repeat that I broke the rules and should have been modkilled and when I ask him when that happened his answer is “I don’t know.”

Well my post was a reply to Dom's complaint that mafia knew he was Agatha.

If you guys are mad mafia learned all your secrets, ask them how they did it.

I didn't modkill you because, like you said, I didn't even see where you broke the rules.

I just don't want to hear complaints about mafia picking out civs to roleblock and then you trying to convince me that you didn't reveal your identities. At some point you did. Maybe do a better job of hiding them next time.

I’m not mad the mafia figured out something.

I’m mad you’re saying I broke the rules when I didn’t.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:23 pm

Epignosis wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2019 10:35 pm Civilians needed nutella dead (not mafia).

Civilians needed Lunalee dead (not mafia).

Civilians needed sprityo dead (not mafia).

Civilians needed five more people dead.

That's eight.

That's too many.

I agree.

I’m not saying I deserved a win because my reads were pretty well junk except on Nutella.

I think there were too many antitown roles compared to town ones.

DDL: Town has 5 blocks so they could have stopped some kills and that’s balance.

Sure, but the town spent all game blocking me.

And if they had blocked some kills, that really would have frustrated the mafia, as I was highly frustrated at the labyrinth of ways to stop kills in Hogwarts that the mafia had to tiptoe around.

Basically, I’m saying this should have been a mountainous game.

Now excuse me. I have to get back to writing my multiball game with a bunch of blocks and a high scum to town ratio.

Welcome to role madness, it only works because people block each other all the time.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:50 pm I mean, Dom keeps saying mafia had extra information but that is factually wrong. Mafia's only source of information was killed night 1.

It's fun to try to pin on me the fact mafia figured out your identities, but it won't change the reality that they did it without my help.

I cannot emphasize enough that we found out NOTHING from DDL. He was extremely tight lipped like every good host.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:51 pm

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:47 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:33 pm It’s also horseshit for a host to repeatedly repeat that I broke the rules and should have been modkilled and when I ask him when that happened his answer is “I don’t know.”

Well my post was a reply to Dom's complaint that mafia knew he was Agatha.

If you guys are mad mafia learned all your secrets, ask them how they did it.

I didn't modkill you because, like you said, I didn't even see where you broke the rules.

I just don't want to hear complaints about mafia picking out civs to roleblock and then you trying to convince me that you didn't reveal your identities. At some point you did. Maybe do a better job of hiding them next time.

I’m not mad the mafia figured out something.

I’m mad you’re saying I broke the rules when I didn’t.

Let's agree that you didn't, then.

I just don't want to hear any more complaints about mafia focus firing on Dom. I guess they were just lucky then.

I think it was Epi who said this in one of my first games here:

I love it when the game mechanics automatically punish civs who dump info.

Imo it is better to have mechanics that punish info dumping (wolf claim vigilante) or make it unreliable (janitor, fakeclaims, misdirection, cloaks, millers) than to just ban it.

Cause then you don’t have to deal with corner cases or accidental rule breaks.

Getting a red peak lynched without dumping is a skill but so is being able to evaluate two cases and choose the one that actually looks better, not the one that has info behind it you weren’t aware of. I think the later is more important.

I legit do not know the proper way to balance multiball and do not want to spend months crafting a game only for all factions to dogpile the town and the town never has a chance or for all factions to cross shoot and give the town an easy win. Will probably do some stuff to specifically avoid this.

And then run tests assuming both worst case scenarios through N3 and see what that looks like.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 3:14 pm Imo it is better to have mechanics that punish info dumping (wolf claim vigilante) or make it unreliable (janitor, fakeclaims, misdirection, cloaks, millers) than to just ban it.

Cause then you don’t have to deal with corner cases or accidental rule breaks.

You are right, but some flavors (like this one) are straight up unplayable unless you ban info dumping. Because all civ roles are named and you can learn who they are using Google.

Janitors are inefficient because civs can just massclaim on day 1.

Fake claims only work if you have a bunch of relevant characters lieing around not being in the game. Still fails if you added all the most relevant characters (which is usually the case). In the Ace Attorney game I hosted a few years ago, I did that and I had a guy who knew the series and didn't play saying he could see through all the fake claims, so I got lucky he wasn't in the game.

All other stuff you mentioned is also puny compared to the insumortable power of 15 civs naming their characters in the first 24 hours. I've seen it happen multiple times. Usually to some newbie host who just read a treatise about the merits of allowing claiming and decided to do that in their game without imagining the consequences.

If I want to host a Girl Genius game, I have two options. Ban claiming, or not host a Girl Genius game.

Sure I can always do something cool like in Hogwarts where I built an entire system to replace the named characters. Or in a One Piece game I made this year where every character was a villain and the faction layout was secret. But that can't be done every single time. Sometimes you just want heroes to be heroes and respect flavor.

The Mafia Scum wiki says claiming should never be banned. But the wiki also says you should never host games with named roles.

Unfortunately, role madness loses a lot of possible setups if you can't have named roles.

This is a variant, and I'd rather have it exist than otherwise.

Yeah, in almost every setup I make, I'm considering replacing characters like in Hogwarts and Fire Emblem.

Lol MafiaScum don't know nothing.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 3:30 pm The Mafia Scum wiki says claiming should never be banned.

I'm not saying we should do what mafia Scum says, just giving an example of how this affects the liberty we have to design games.

It's not just pressing the "allow claim" or "not allow claim" buttons. If influences what kind of game you are making from the ground.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 4:59 pm I'm not saying we should do what mafia Scum says, just giving an example of how this affects the liberty we have to design games.

It's not just pressing the "allow claim" or "not allow claim" buttons. If influences what kind of game you are making from the ground.

Right, I'm just rolling my eyes at mafiascum and their closed-mindedmess.

I'm done bitching because I did have fun.

But I don't like being told that my complaints are rooted in shitty play. I think epi and I both offered constructive criticism.

Yeah, it was a fun game, it did what it set out to do, there's some fairness to "town lost cause town made mistakes" and also some fairness to "the setup didn't allow room for as many mistakes as it should have". It's kinda up to views on how many mistakes town can be allowed to make or moreover if a game goes mostly even who is allowed the victory (if town and mafia play at the same rate).

TonyStarkPrime wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 9:48 pm Yeah, it was a fun game, it did what it set out to do, there's some fairness to "town lost cause town made mistakes" and also some fairness to "the setup didn't allow room for as many mistakes as it should have". It's kinda up to views on how many mistakes town can be allowed to make or moreover if a game goes mostly even who is allowed the victory (if town and mafia play at the same rate).

I felt like we were neck in neck down to the wire.

TonyStarkPrime wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 9:48 pm Yeah, it was a fun game, it did what it set out to do, there's some fairness to "town lost cause town made mistakes" and also some fairness to "the setup didn't allow room for as many mistakes as it should have". It's kinda up to views on how many mistakes town can be allowed to make or moreover if a game goes mostly even who is allowed the victory (if town and mafia play at the same rate).

Yeah and I’m not sure what that number is.

12 vs 3 mountainous town gets 4 mislynches and needs 3 correct ones.
10 vs 2 mountainous town gets 3 mislynches (and a no lynch day) to get 2 correct lynches.

So I think generally speaking the goal would be for the town to be able to mislynch a little more than half the time.

There’s also the debate of if all multiball factions should have an equal chance to win or if the town should have a 50% chance to win and each scum faction has an equal chance of the other 50% to win. I kinda lean towards the later but that causes some problems where if you have 4 scum factions, they each only have a 13% chance to win by design.

Mechanics like alternating mafia kills or the madness meter mechanic can help standardize things somewhat but rubber banding and swing is a real problem.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 9:36 pm

juliets wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 9:35 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 9:10 pm

juliets wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 7:01 pm Jack, I think it's time to tell us what you meant by this:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 11:40 pm

Owner of a Lonely Heart wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 11:14 pm

Dom wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 11:08 pm
Sure. Potential.
Why am I defending someone I haven't voted for instead of you defending your vote for her... ?
That seems ass-backwards.

Last I checked, I asked you a question, and you flat out deflected. I don't care that you're not voting for them. I was curious why you thought the votes on her were bad.

I kind wanted to see both sides of the coin here. But all I got, is more of reason to look into Dom if Michelle turns out to be a baddie.

I have a really stupid reason to think Dom is town and also he seems pretty much like town Dom. (But I've never seen scum Dom so take that with a grain of salt.)

I would love to but it’s skirting the rules to say any more about that.

Ok, how about this - do you still believe you have a reason outside of him seeming like town Dom, even if it is a "stupid" reason?

Yeah.

[mention]Jackofhearts2005[/mention] This convo is what made me sure you were Tarvek and Dom was Agatha, if you were confused by that. It's particularly that you say that you can't say why Dom is town to you because that would be skirting the rules. That gives away that it's something mechanical. And with the roles left this could only really mean one thing. If I was town in this game, I would come to the same conclusion and solve the game (arguably unfairly according the the rules) from there. As it turned out, I think it did help us to know which of you was which role.

---

As for the balance discussion, I'm not going to say a lot about it other than that I've played several hundred games, both classic games and power madness. And this was not by any stretch a particularly imbalanced game for a power madness game. It really wasn't. But the thing is, playing such a role heavy game is a totally different beast than playing a classic game. It's naturally way more swingy, depending on what roles and numbers of each faction that die early. And players normally will experience that they have way less control over the outcome of the game because there's so many unknown factors. Any faction that wins will have to get lucky and then capitalize on that. For town to win, they will have to rely on some scum on scum violence, or else they will have to play close to perfect. For mafia to win, they will have to rely on town and indies to go at each other and not go after them. That actually happened this game, and the mafia team was able to capitalize off of that. Town played well to get rid of indies, but the outcome was better for mafia than for town. That shit will happen in power madness games. That was lucky for the mafia this time around, but we also were able to play off of that. For example could neither Jack or Owner, who has some idea about my play and meta, recognize me as scum at all before it was basically mechanically obvious. The last three mafia was able to stay afloat just long enough. In reality, it was a very close game, even with the mafia getting lucky to not have to worry so much about indies. The game was not imbalanced, it was just chaotic and unpredictable, like most power madness games, where one faction's chance of winning really isn't the greatest to start with.

The point about having town that cares about the game and makes a good effort is a good one though. In general, playing as town is very difficult imo, and it requires a lot of effort. This is why I'm usually way happier when I win as town, because it requires everyone to come together despite of differences, and that is not easy. Town is probably the alignment that gets punished the most for "lazy play" or players dropping out. That again is not a matter of balance though.

Seems I was able to rant for quite a while anyway. =p

Those are my pennies, and I still had fun playing both as town for a short while, and as mafia.

Reminder to self or mod crew to update Hall of Fame.

I apologize if my posts came across as saying civilians played badly. That was not the point. The point was that, under the framework of teams I build, the civilians failed to achieve the goals they had to achieve in order to win as well as the mafia. That said, there is a discussion to be done about whether multiball is good or not, or if that framework was fair to begin with. I think I'll go with Dizzy's point: power madness is just much more swingy.

I don't normally host games with a 1/6 indie to non-indie ratio, tbh. I did it this time because it fit flavor, but normally a game this size hosted by me with have 1 or 2 indies.

HAven't bothered to read through all the drama, but maybe if the looser stopped always bitching about imbalanced or whatevers, we wouldn't have as much trouble filling games or getting new hosts.

Having said that, screw you nova this was my first scum game here in like 2 years and you killed me so early.

Great work baddie team! Y'all did amazing carrying the torch to victory and tbh I figured it was a done deal for us when I was shot so early in.
Also loved the set up and roles DDL.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 3:30 pm The Mafia Scum wiki says claiming should never be banned. But the wiki also says you should never host games with named roles.

Unfortunately, role madness loses a lot of possible setups if you can't have named roles.

This is a variant, and I'd rather have it exist than otherwise.

I will never host a game without named roles. I'd rather have *SECRETS* at the end of most roles in order to keep the mystery.

When is a new game starting??

Long Con wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2019 2:11 am

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 3:30 pm The Mafia Scum wiki says claiming should never be banned. But the wiki also says you should never host games with named roles.

Unfortunately, role madness loses a lot of possible setups if you can't have named roles.

This is a variant, and I'd rather have it exist than otherwise.

I will never host a game without named roles. I'd rather have *SECRETS* at the end of most roles in order to keep the mystery.

When is a new game starting??

We’re just three short on Persona 5.

sig wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 8:46 pm HAven't bothered to read through all the drama, but maybe if the looser stopped always bitching about imbalanced or whatevers, we wouldn't have as much trouble filling games or getting new hosts.

Having said that, screw you nova this was my first scum game here in like 2 years and you killed me so early.

Great work baddie team! Y'all did amazing carrying the torch to victory and tbh I figured it was a done deal for us when I was shot so early in.
Also loved the set up and roles DDL.

Don't know if to argue or to correct spelling...

Maybe you can all join Dogs vs Cats for another chance of proving the balance is all wrong (and for winning too)!

I am :nod:

Dom wrote: ↑Sun Sep 08, 2019 9:34 pm

sig wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 8:46 pm HAven't bothered to read through all the drama, but maybe if the looser stopped always bitching about imbalanced or whatevers, we wouldn't have as much trouble filling games or getting new hosts.

Having said that, screw you nova this was my first scum game here in like 2 years and you killed me so early.

Great work baddie team! Y'all did amazing carrying the torch to victory and tbh I figured it was a done deal for us when I was shot so early in.
Also loved the set up and roles DDL.

Don't know if to argue or to correct spelling...

Expect much worse spelling from here on out, drunk posting is fun.

Finally got this sucker updated in the hall of fame, excluding the spreadsheet. We'll catch up on that guy as soon as we can.