sandshrewz: you are correct in that they would be nametargeted and evil people (everyone) indeed could metagame and specifically target newbies. But frankly I think that most of the people playing games nowadays don't read this thread or even have knowledge on who's new, who's pro and who just hasn't played for a year.
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Acklow
I am always tired. Don't bother me.
No it is that addicting...
Well, as a (relatively) experienced but not pro player on Smogon, here's the problems I see:
-In traditional Smogon (OC legal) formats, the village is no longer an uninformed majority. This is because anyone who can clean themselves can then demand claims from every player in the game, and then use other players' actions to confirm or deny claims. That may sound obvious and basic to the experienced players here, but it's the root of all the problems with the OC format. When the village leader has all the information, then the BG always knows who to protect with 100% accuracy, the Doctor is always inspecting the players most likely to be scum instead of players they personally think are scum, and in the absence of miller/redirection mechanics it is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for a united village to mislynch. This means that the success of the mafia factions is based on whether they can kill the two most important power roles (the BG and the Inspector) early on in the game. If they can, then they will probably win. If not, then the Village can simply appoint a leader and coast to victory.
-In traditional Smogon format games with anti-village leader mechanics, villager motivation quickly vanishes. Without information, most villager actions are useless or even harmful. Therefore, when the village leader is either inept or nonexistent, the village quickly becomes apathetic and gives up, with cries of "lol this game". This was most visible in Daenym's game from a few years ago, Turnip Mafia, where the game consisted of 14 villagers vs. a killing/recruiting wolf and his partner who had a single lynch redirect for himself and an infinite lynch redirect if anyone other then him was being lynched. After the third lynch attempt on the wolf, nobody was really trying anymore; everyone had already declared defeat. Now, that may be a obscure, absurd example, but we've even seen this happen in more recent games, most notably in the most recent Big game where once the villagers figured out that they were just pawns in the struggle between Dracula and Van Helsing and that they literally couldn't do anything on their own, they just quit and refused to play on, leading to the game's abandonment.
-In multifaction games, kingmakers are detrimental to the fun of the game. Allowing a faction that has already effectively lost to decide the winner is pretty horrible game design, but there's not much you can really do about it in multifaction apart from outright removing factions who could create kingmakers. However, multifaction with all factions somewhat informed is a pretty fun game until you get to the kingmaker, so there's that.
-In NOC formats, there's only so much innovation that can happen, but the same amount of mundane clerical work still exists for the host. This is because NOC formats, thanks to sites like Mafiascum and EpicMafia, have largely already been solved for smaller formats, with clear winning strategies available and documented for both the village and the mafia. Even with balanced numbers, slight changes in roles or mechanics like in my Twilight Princess mafia a few months back significantly changed the balance of the game (although the fact that it was a beginner and some of the village roles were never even used probably also contributed). The best balanced games in recent memory were probably Blue_Tornado's NOC games (Company Mafia and Mafia from the Depths), and these were considered to be well balanced, enjoyable games by the playerbase, although both were completely standard (with MftD even being an all vanilla game!). As a result, NOC games are fun for players, but limit the amount of fun available for the hosts, which is probably why we saw a move back to regular Smogon format after the last few NOC games.
After considering all of the above, I think that there are simply too many unresolvable problems with the OC legal format. Therefore, I propose that we mostly do away with the outside communication legal mafia format. NOC games have proven to be much more fun and (usually) more balanced, and series of random minigames like Bass' A Cereal Murder or askaninjask's ongoing Everyone Who Signs Up Will Be In This Game should also continue to be a thing on Circus Maximus. In order to fill the niche of "Outside Communication semi-mafia game", I suggest we move to tactical games like MGS mafia and the fairly recent Game of Thrones game. These have proven to be much more engaging for all players in the game then the village leader system.
tl;dr kill the smogon format and replace it with:
-more NOC
-more tactical games (where every faction is informed)
-more random minigame collections
-In traditional Smogon (OC legal) formats, the village is no longer an uninformed majority. This is because anyone who can clean themselves can then demand claims from every player in the game, and then use other players' actions to confirm or deny claims. That may sound obvious and basic to the experienced players here, but it's the root of all the problems with the OC format. When the village leader has all the information, then the BG always knows who to protect with 100% accuracy, the Doctor is always inspecting the players most likely to be scum instead of players they personally think are scum, and in the absence of miller/redirection mechanics it is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for a united village to mislynch. This means that the success of the mafia factions is based on whether they can kill the two most important power roles (the BG and the Inspector) early on in the game. If they can, then they will probably win. If not, then the Village can simply appoint a leader and coast to victory.
-In traditional Smogon format games with anti-village leader mechanics, villager motivation quickly vanishes. Without information, most villager actions are useless or even harmful. Therefore, when the village leader is either inept or nonexistent, the village quickly becomes apathetic and gives up, with cries of "lol this game". This was most visible in Daenym's game from a few years ago, Turnip Mafia, where the game consisted of 14 villagers vs. a killing/recruiting wolf and his partner who had a single lynch redirect for himself and an infinite lynch redirect if anyone other then him was being lynched. After the third lynch attempt on the wolf, nobody was really trying anymore; everyone had already declared defeat. Now, that may be a obscure, absurd example, but we've even seen this happen in more recent games, most notably in the most recent Big game where once the villagers figured out that they were just pawns in the struggle between Dracula and Van Helsing and that they literally couldn't do anything on their own, they just quit and refused to play on, leading to the game's abandonment.
-In multifaction games, kingmakers are detrimental to the fun of the game. Allowing a faction that has already effectively lost to decide the winner is pretty horrible game design, but there's not much you can really do about it in multifaction apart from outright removing factions who could create kingmakers. However, multifaction with all factions somewhat informed is a pretty fun game until you get to the kingmaker, so there's that.
-In NOC formats, there's only so much innovation that can happen, but the same amount of mundane clerical work still exists for the host. This is because NOC formats, thanks to sites like Mafiascum and EpicMafia, have largely already been solved for smaller formats, with clear winning strategies available and documented for both the village and the mafia. Even with balanced numbers, slight changes in roles or mechanics like in my Twilight Princess mafia a few months back significantly changed the balance of the game (although the fact that it was a beginner and some of the village roles were never even used probably also contributed). The best balanced games in recent memory were probably Blue_Tornado's NOC games (Company Mafia and Mafia from the Depths), and these were considered to be well balanced, enjoyable games by the playerbase, although both were completely standard (with MftD even being an all vanilla game!). As a result, NOC games are fun for players, but limit the amount of fun available for the hosts, which is probably why we saw a move back to regular Smogon format after the last few NOC games.
After considering all of the above, I think that there are simply too many unresolvable problems with the OC legal format. Therefore, I propose that we mostly do away with the outside communication legal mafia format. NOC games have proven to be much more fun and (usually) more balanced, and series of random minigames like Bass' A Cereal Murder or askaninjask's ongoing Everyone Who Signs Up Will Be In This Game should also continue to be a thing on Circus Maximus. In order to fill the niche of "Outside Communication semi-mafia game", I suggest we move to tactical games like MGS mafia and the fairly recent Game of Thrones game. These have proven to be much more engaging for all players in the game then the village leader system.
tl;dr kill the smogon format and replace it with:
-more NOC
-more tactical games (where every faction is informed)
-more random minigame collections
shinyskarmory: There's nothing wrong with OC games as a concept. A good game makes sure the mafia has tools to counter an informed majority. (and a really good game makes sure the mafia works hard for them) It's deceptively easy to break a seemingly united village - no good backup leaders left, no good roles left, you name it. A good game also makes sure every player has some motivation to actually give a shit about the game, for the entire game. Your opinion is based on a lot of failed OC games and a few successful NOC games.
Hosts: Make sure people are interested in your game before running it. If you don't you're just going to be stuck with players who didn't want to make you feel bad for not having signups. These guys will idle. I suggest interest threads.
Players: Don't do the above.
Practical suggestion: Punish idlers a la No Cowards.
Hosts: Make sure people are interested in your game before running it. If you don't you're just going to be stuck with players who didn't want to make you feel bad for not having signups. These guys will idle. I suggest interest threads.
Players: Don't do the above.
Practical suggestion: Punish idlers a la No Cowards.
A lot of the current lack of games, I feel, is due to the enormous pressure that hosts always feel to innovate with their games. In the "golden days" of smofia, people hosted very similar games lots of times, so we had lots of activity - every game was 2v1 with some theme (2v1 with x-men flavor, 2v1 with mario flavor, 2v1 with 28 days later flavor, 2v1 with 90's cartoons flavor, 2v1 with bad character flavor, 2v1 with minor character flavor, ...). Now I feel like it's difficult to get anyone to sign up for a game that's "vanilla" in any reasonable way.
We have a number of "types" of games that work pretty well. 2v1, 1v1, lynchpin, viva style, TCG style/free for all, and multifaction (which at this point is just a basket term for everything else). All of these have a lot of potential to be fun except for lynchpin. If we just had people "remaking" these games with some novel roles on each team, I would love to play them. We just need people to create the games.
This same pressure to innovate has also alienated new users. New users come into the forum trying to figure out "what's up here" and see a bunch of really complicated games that have nothing to do with anything they've ever experienced. I'm the worst culprit of this - I hosted so many cards mafia. The games that appeal to veteran users are not the same games as those that will appeal to newcomers.
We have a number of "types" of games that work pretty well. 2v1, 1v1, lynchpin, viva style, TCG style/free for all, and multifaction (which at this point is just a basket term for everything else). All of these have a lot of potential to be fun except for lynchpin. If we just had people "remaking" these games with some novel roles on each team, I would love to play them. We just need people to create the games.
This same pressure to innovate has also alienated new users. New users come into the forum trying to figure out "what's up here" and see a bunch of really complicated games that have nothing to do with anything they've ever experienced. I'm the worst culprit of this - I hosted so many cards mafia. The games that appeal to veteran users are not the same games as those that will appeal to newcomers.
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I'm pretty sure that most of the problems SS is talking about are a result of power creep/bad design, not anything inherently wrong with OC. Smogon OC games tend to be a lot higher power level than other sites' mafia (or even Smogon's own NOC games), which will lead to a lot of the stuff SS is talking about (although kingmakers are always a possibility in any game with 3 or more factions)
Like, of the standard roles, I would say only Hooker, Safeguard, and some redirection roles are bad to just throw out randomly as town, but town Safeguard is usually awful even if you do know what's going on so w/e.
Also there's like a thousand forums on the internet that play NOC and only NOC and have never even heard of OC, but Smogon is the only place I've seen where OC is common and played really really well. I don't see a reason to give that up because some people make shitty setups, because you'll still have shitty setups in NOC unless you just play Open setups, but most of those are solved and will get stale really quick.
Like, of the standard roles, I would say only Hooker, Safeguard, and some redirection roles are bad to just throw out randomly as town, but town Safeguard is usually awful even if you do know what's going on so w/e.
Also there's like a thousand forums on the internet that play NOC and only NOC and have never even heard of OC, but Smogon is the only place I've seen where OC is common and played really really well. I don't see a reason to give that up because some people make shitty setups, because you'll still have shitty setups in NOC unless you just play Open setups, but most of those are solved and will get stale really quick.
Just an FYI my big game, no caps, is ready to go but I have been waiting for the holidays to end. It is flexible in size in multiples of a certain number. I've been hesitating to start it since mafia has been taken off life support and is waiting for the air left in its lungs to run out as well as how much of a hyuck BIGS was (in my defense none of you should have expected a notably serious game from an April Fools joke!!). Everyone enjoyed AQUANAfia though and had fun so hopefully people will enjoy my big and sign up??
I need to talk to pluff to get the anon forum set up but Heartless Mafia is otherwise ready and has no herp RNG roles or anything left to the moment to design. You also can't complain your faction's roles sucked because you will recruit them all yourself!!!
I need to talk to pluff to get the anon forum set up but Heartless Mafia is otherwise ready and has no herp RNG roles or anything left to the moment to design. You also can't complain your faction's roles sucked because you will recruit them all yourself!!!
People don't sign up for games that aren't innovative? News to me. Just make things interesting with a few unique roles and good design and you won't need any shiny mechanics in there. (basically I agree with the middle bit)
If you want to innovate in a game you design, I suggest you compare UncleSam's Metroid Prime Mafia to his Metroid Prime 2 mafia. One of the main factors in MP1 was the location system, where you could only target people in the same or an adjacent location, or else your action would fail. This factor decreased the chances that anyone without a good amount of info would be able to perform effectively, which led to some disinterest among the players. Since this game was 1 mafia vs 1 village vs 2 or 3 wolves iirc, it is understandable that the mafia faction did pretty damn well. When you look at Metroid Prime 2 mafia, the main innovation was the addition of the temples to the game. For those who don't know, the temples were 4 of the aliases in the game, and each faction had to open/prevent-from-being-open different temples in addition to eliminating their enemies. This change was handled pretty well in my opinion, as there was an included mechanic to find the temples. While I do think that MP2 mafia was pretty complicated, a lot of this was due to the fact that there were 8 factions, and each player had pretty powerful and dynamic roles. The temple system was pretty basic and easy to understand, as well as being fairly well balanced.
TL;DR: If you want to innovate, make sure your change/addition is simple enough to understand, and works with the balance of the game.
TL;DR: If you want to innovate, make sure your change/addition is simple enough to understand, and works with the balance of the game.
The two problems in my eyes seem to be 1. New people don't want to play 2. People don't want to host games.
Looking back, it seems a lot of the games were hosted by the same people, which isn't necessarily bad, but I feel it does show that people for whatever reason are either uninterested or unwilling to create new games. I think it's hard to believe that it is the former, I know personally I do have some ideas that I envision every now and then. I think maybe a large barrier is that potential hosts don't know where to get started. There's a lot of talk on what people what to play, OC vs NOC, and innovating games, but I think the core issue is that there are little to no games to play. And I think getting new hosts who have ideas but maybe need help with the execution would be a step in the right direction in encouraging new games. Can we maybe do more to help people out in that area? Perhaps.
The other explanation is the lack of people leads to hosts feeling their game won't get played. I personally feel that we need new people. Mafia gets stagnant in my eyes without new people. Could we do more to reach out to new players? I think we can. The question is do we really want to. I don't know, I guess I feel we are a pretty "exclusive" community that doesn't necessarily give new players a lot of incentive to stay on and maybe we should do more to bring new players in. Getting to meet new people along with the old I feel is the most fun and ideal situation. I don't think we need to go to extremes as "abolishing" smogon mafia (honestly if the so called "broken" formats were really that bad, mafia would've died a long time ago, so it's not that imo), but yeah, maybe more less key games would get people into the forum and provide a medium that could be used to then introduce these players into mafia. probably others will disagree with me on this, but I feel that having simple, yet complex non-mafia games could provide a fun alternative and pump enough blood into the forum to get people interested in mafia again. But that's just what I think.
kinda a random aside, whatever happened to the mafia bot? did that just die from inactivity or what?
just my thoughts
Looking back, it seems a lot of the games were hosted by the same people, which isn't necessarily bad, but I feel it does show that people for whatever reason are either uninterested or unwilling to create new games. I think it's hard to believe that it is the former, I know personally I do have some ideas that I envision every now and then. I think maybe a large barrier is that potential hosts don't know where to get started. There's a lot of talk on what people what to play, OC vs NOC, and innovating games, but I think the core issue is that there are little to no games to play. And I think getting new hosts who have ideas but maybe need help with the execution would be a step in the right direction in encouraging new games. Can we maybe do more to help people out in that area? Perhaps.
The other explanation is the lack of people leads to hosts feeling their game won't get played. I personally feel that we need new people. Mafia gets stagnant in my eyes without new people. Could we do more to reach out to new players? I think we can. The question is do we really want to. I don't know, I guess I feel we are a pretty "exclusive" community that doesn't necessarily give new players a lot of incentive to stay on and maybe we should do more to bring new players in. Getting to meet new people along with the old I feel is the most fun and ideal situation. I don't think we need to go to extremes as "abolishing" smogon mafia (honestly if the so called "broken" formats were really that bad, mafia would've died a long time ago, so it's not that imo), but yeah, maybe more less key games would get people into the forum and provide a medium that could be used to then introduce these players into mafia. probably others will disagree with me on this, but I feel that having simple, yet complex non-mafia games could provide a fun alternative and pump enough blood into the forum to get people interested in mafia again. But that's just what I think.
kinda a random aside, whatever happened to the mafia bot? did that just die from inactivity or what?
just my thoughts
This site has a mentorship program. Mentors could help beginners play their first game, or help new hosts design/host their game.
And yeah, this subforum can have other games in it too. Its activity doesn't hinge on whether or not mafia is being played.
And yeah, this subforum can have other games in it too. Its activity doesn't hinge on whether or not mafia is being played.
Just curious here. Is it possible to copy a game that has worked well in the past and is sufficiently old? Probably more related to mafia. And maybe just make minor tweaks instead of having to start from scratch. This would perhaps relieve some stress off hosts if there is?
Also no cowards everything sounds cool! :)
Also no cowards everything sounds cool! :)
It's possible. Granted a game's age means nothing since you could just skim through the setup at any time, but it'll probably make some people want to play it anyway. (and other people are going to get mad that you're ruining a gem but you can't do anything about that)
Acklow
I am always tired. Don't bother me.
Only problem is that the only CM mentor listed that has some experience in game design is StevenSnype, unless Ace Emerald and Wild Eep have unlisted know how and have hosted games on other sites. jumpluff is the only other mentor listed that has hosted games in CM but she isn't acknowledged for being a CM related mentor on the Mentors list onsite.
My only solution is either nominate a mod who has game-making know how (and the willingness to commit to mentoring new hosts) or find a user who would be committed. I'm sure something of this sort has already been discussed many times in the past by the higher ups though.
Being that I only go on Circus nowadays, I didn't know of the mentorship program. I'd gladly be a Circus-specific mentor if someone would lead me in the right direction. I have some experience with game design and a lo of experience playing, so I think I'd be fine for the job. Only problem is I sometimes have trouble being patient with new users.
Why not have a simple questions simple answers thread? I feel like most questions about the game could be answered in that format.
Jalmont: Captkirby stopped hosting his mafiabot for whatever reason. Jumpluff has a mafia script on one of her accounts but it is somewhat buggy and cannot handle a large amount of players. I do feel like a good mafiabot would help transition newer players into the forum game though, as it is how I and many other users first got accustomed to mafia.
I don't think he meant those mentors exactly. Probably more like a (small) list of mentors from Circ itself. I'll add my hat in for mentoring people, preferably for game design.
a lot of the reason that a lot of the old crowd stopped playing is simply that the old crowd stopped playing. people want to play mafia with people they know and are friends with, it increases the fun and its nice to get one over on dickheads like mekkah. i'm not sure how much more you can do with developing smogon mafia as a game, it will naturally transition as games are played. all we need to do is ensure we keep a core playerbase playing smogon mafia.
also pls don't suggest more NOC, NOC is garbage
also pls don't suggest more NOC, NOC is garbage
How about accepting that Smogon Mafia became so bloated and removed from the party game most people are familiar with that it started to gradually scare away more and more users who would otherwise have given it a shot? I know that I for one would never have tried playing any of the recent Smogon Mafia games as a first go, and the Beginner tier of games more or less failed horribly at acclimating new players to the Smogon style.
I also agree with shade that NOC as it has been tried thus far is garbage, though I suspect there are ways to restrict communication that could work and haven't really been tried yet.
I also agree with shade that NOC as it has been tried thus far is garbage, though I suspect there are ways to restrict communication that could work and haven't really been tried yet.
I suppose I should post here.
Currently the Circus lacks:
- People who want to play, at least compared to its heyday
- People who want to host
- People who are actively moderating the place
All of these factors all make the forum end up in a negative spiral. Why host if no one will play? Why play if no one will host? Why would I play if none of my old friends are around to play?
The only way to solve this is to take the initiative, find some old friends and try to get them interested.
As for game design, right now we don't need anything fancy. Remember this game?
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/expert-this-is-how-we-mafia-game-overrrrr-postgame-up.3457601/
People liked it, and it had nothing revolutionairy. Just a few well thought out roles.
Currently the Circus lacks:
- People who want to play, at least compared to its heyday
- People who want to host
- People who are actively moderating the place
All of these factors all make the forum end up in a negative spiral. Why host if no one will play? Why play if no one will host? Why would I play if none of my old friends are around to play?
The only way to solve this is to take the initiative, find some old friends and try to get them interested.
As for game design, right now we don't need anything fancy. Remember this game?
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/expert-this-is-how-we-mafia-game-overrrrr-postgame-up.3457601/
People liked it, and it had nothing revolutionairy. Just a few well thought out roles.
Why the hate against NOC? I myself am a pretty inexperienced mafia player (only having played in three or four games, and co-hosting one), and during standard OC games, I felt less motivated to keep up with the game. As a new player, a lot of the game was entirely lost on me, and I mostly just did what the village leader said. On the other hand, in NOC, you get a full scope of the game, and I feel it's easier to get into as well. My feeling is that NOC games are more suited to beginners than OC games and are easier to play in, and therefore more useful in reviving activity in Smogon mafia. I understand that OC should still be a thing, but I don't know if writing off NOC entirely is that great of an idea.