That’s not impossible, but the tech team has a long list of stuff to work on, so it’d end up in the tail end of that.
Edit: Nice, this post is already outdated! :D
Good stuff, Captain
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MafiEra Season 11 Mini Review |OT| Buffy Wars
- Thread starter Sawneeks
- Start date
Edit: Nice, this post is already outdated! :D
Good stuff, Captain
Fireblend
ABLF
I don't understand the day/night phases length pseudo-drama.
48/24 is not a "Gamefaqs thing", phase duration is a game design aspect that can be tweaked like all others, and as such it has an impact on the game as a whole. I don't think it's a silver bullet to any inactivity-related issues, but game designers should be able to freely decide whether they want their day phases to go for 72 or 48 hours (or a different duration, if they have good justification), and this isn't just something I'm saying, but something we already do like the Berserk and Bill & Ted examples show, so I'm not sure what is being discussed. We've historically leaned towards longer day phases, but if games like those have good reception I don't see why we couldn't eventually move towards having a more even distribution just by consequence of other game designers' noticing those games' success and wanting to run tighter designs. Choice is always good.
And I don't see it affecting "the larger structure of mafiera games as a whole" either; just make it clear to people the game will have shorter phases (as far as I know we had no backslash towards Berserk or B&T for their phase lengths, so the mods did fine on that regard), and let them decide if they want to play knowing that it will probably be a shorter game. If it runs along with a longer game, then they'll have to wait for it to finish, no biggie.
This is like saying "On karksmaps.com we always had maps on our games and we loved em, so we should put maps on all games!" :P nothing is a silver bullet but there is no need to be 100% against it if there is interest from players.
48/24 is not a "Gamefaqs thing", phase duration is a game design aspect that can be tweaked like all others, and as such it has an impact on the game as a whole. I don't think it's a silver bullet to any inactivity-related issues, but game designers should be able to freely decide whether they want their day phases to go for 72 or 48 hours (or a different duration, if they have good justification), and this isn't just something I'm saying, but something we already do like the Berserk and Bill & Ted examples show, so I'm not sure what is being discussed. We've historically leaned towards longer day phases, but if games like those have good reception I don't see why we couldn't eventually move towards having a more even distribution just by consequence of other game designers' noticing those games' success and wanting to run tighter designs. Choice is always good.
And I don't see it affecting "the larger structure of mafiera games as a whole" either; just make it clear to people the game will have shorter phases (as far as I know we had no backslash towards Berserk or B&T for their phase lengths, so the mods did fine on that regard), and let them decide if they want to play knowing that it will probably be a shorter game. If it runs along with a longer game, then they'll have to wait for it to finish, no biggie.
This is like saying "On karksmaps.com we always had maps on our games and we loved em, so we should put maps on all games!" :P nothing is a silver bullet but there is no need to be 100% against it if there is interest from players.
It is supposed to be done the first way, but sometimes it happens the other way.
Thank you, my thoughts exactly(but better written lol)
Natiko
Town's Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer
I feel like we need someone to go crunch the numbers and see what the average post count per player is on D1 of games of different length (48 vs 72) to give you that. I can sit here and say it’ll lead to more engagement, force the inactives to show up or get replaced more consistently, etc. but that’s all theoretical.
Hecht
Like dubstep for my bootyhole
oh look a volunteer
sigh. That was not at all what I was saying. What I was saying was "at x we did y" is not a strong or convincing argument by itself.
Also not something I argued, if this is to me. Absolutely said gamerunners should be free to experiment. But I do think we should be cognizant that some things aren't going to work for everyone and if we want to maintain an inclusive community, keeping a balance is also important.
People definitely gravitate toward "new shiny" without always considering implications. A game that ends faster sounds great until it's three weeks of 48/24 with a big roster and no one's had any downtime and then what? These are the questions I'm asking; what I'm saying is that the games have a lot of moving parts and we need to consider all of them. Hence suggesting let's try multiple things with the upcoming games and see what happens. What worked in some games may not work in others - we experiment further and find those mitigating factors. Then we plan for that.
I dunno if we can learn much from direct comparisons of day ones, though; too many variables. But it's worth a look, maybe cross-comparing to the number of traditionally more/less active players on the roster.
I don't normally post my thoughts in these threads, because I have always considered myself a servant of the whim of the community. But I'm going to chime in this time. :D
I don't care about phase lengths as long as the expectation is clear. I personally feel like the Hecht Rhythm is the best method, but that's just me. In my personal opinion, this is a design decision, and should be made by the gamerunner, and the community as a whole shouldn't really be mandating it. Again, my opinion.
10 posts, IMO, is an appropriate guideline. I think it's the lowest reasonable bar for activity, and based on our prior performance, I think asking for more than 3.3 posts per Real World Day is asking too much.
We have not implemented such a rule thus far, partly because we've had people who are passionate about Mafia but have trouble getting into the rhythm of the game. For example, we had a player on GAF who crashed a game because she freaked out and revealed the entire scum team. It's the one and only time we've had to completely stop and reboot a game. She replaced out of, I think, the next two or three games, but I'd have to go back and look. Some of the members of the mod team at that time argued that we should ban her from playing. Spider, Hecht and I stood firm that she should be allowed to continue signing up as long as she was willing to keep trying. Our patience was rewarded - that player is now a pillar of the community, a fine player, and a fantastic gamerunner.
Now, if that becomes necessary going forward, so be it, but I firmly believe in giving people extra chances, and it's worked out for me so far.
I don't care about phase lengths as long as the expectation is clear. I personally feel like the Hecht Rhythm is the best method, but that's just me. In my personal opinion, this is a design decision, and should be made by the gamerunner, and the community as a whole shouldn't really be mandating it. Again, my opinion.
10 posts, IMO, is an appropriate guideline. I think it's the lowest reasonable bar for activity, and based on our prior performance, I think asking for more than 3.3 posts per Real World Day is asking too much.
We have not implemented such a rule thus far, partly because we've had people who are passionate about Mafia but have trouble getting into the rhythm of the game. For example, we had a player on GAF who crashed a game because she freaked out and revealed the entire scum team. It's the one and only time we've had to completely stop and reboot a game. She replaced out of, I think, the next two or three games, but I'd have to go back and look. Some of the members of the mod team at that time argued that we should ban her from playing. Spider, Hecht and I stood firm that she should be allowed to continue signing up as long as she was willing to keep trying. Our patience was rewarded - that player is now a pillar of the community, a fine player, and a fantastic gamerunner.
Now, if that becomes necessary going forward, so be it, but I firmly believe in giving people extra chances, and it's worked out for me so far.
Fireblend
ABLF
I agree, I didn't quote you or anyone else anywhere on my post because I was speaking in general terms, not trying to shut down anyone's argument in particular. I agree that badly supported arguments are undesirable, but not because they're badly supported they have to be ignored; if good support is provided (which is what I attempted to do with my post), then they can be brought up again and considered. If anything, me saying 48/24 is not a GFaqs thing was meant more towards Geno, for trying to equate what I see as a game design variable as a "community thing".
Again, my post wasn't a refutation of any of your points, more of a rephrasing of Geno's 48/24h suggestion. And as I said, if we start leaning towards different-length phases, that will be because, in a very natural way, game designers will have decided to start running their games like that after seeing others' success. It feels like a false dilemma to say that it's either one or the other. Since this community designs its own games, the games will fit the community's wants and needs through simple iteration.
That's exactly how we already work though. Again, I'm against calling 48/24h phases a silver bullet. It's just an arbitrary game design aspect that, like any other game design aspects, should be considered when designing games. If it works, we'll see more of them. If it doesn't, we'll see less. The community won't suffer for it.
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Huh, look who's talking... I don't know ignoring others doesn't seem like the epitome of fun to me, bro.
turmoil7
Imperial Corps Commander Who Cheers the Army
Sorry about that :p it was an stupid gambit, turned out bad, then tried to dig upwards at the begging of the next day
About the format stuff, what really bothers me is that it makes things harder to read to change the font/colour. As long as people don't go crazy doing it wouldn't be a problem, but if people get into it and they combo, a gameruned should warn against it
About the format stuff, what really bothers me is that it makes things harder to read to change the font/colour. As long as people don't go crazy doing it wouldn't be a problem, but if people get into it and they combo, a gameruned should warn against it
Natiko
Town's Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer
But then you’re working with tainted samples. The loud voices may have been silenced by then so the post count would skew lower which might mask some of the differences.
Splinter
Lord of Volcano Island
I did link to the explanation :p
I'm talking about dynamic day phases: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5BQXPP7
Not suggesting we all switch to it, I just keep mentioning it occasionally in the hopes that some gamerunner will try using it :p
Natiko
Town's Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer
I would love to play in a game like this just to see how it goes. I feel like if activity levels weren’t good though it could be excruciating.
Flush
Poker Royalty
Increase of post quota won't solve the problem. I didn't read Console Mafia, but I'm not the slightest surprised that it went how it went. Just look it the roster. Obviously I can't judge the newbies or other members I haven't played with so far, but from the people I know, the only one that I would categorize as posters with activity level above average while not having 80% shitposts would be FluxWaveZ.
We do have low-activity people in this community. I'm probably one of them. They will not drive the thread forward in a significant way, no matter how many posts you force them to make. The posts just will go down in quality. There are two ways to deal with this: Either ban them from our community, or try to make the games work despite them. The key here in my opinion is roster-balance. A game full of high-activity players will be very fun for those players, but a lot of work for the low-activity ones. The inverse case we can see with CW. I think we need to enforce more diverse rosters (activity-wise), even if that means that high-activity players have to carry a game they didn't even sign up for. As somebody said earlier: The game is just the framework; the core part is the interactions with the other players, so I hope that wouldn't ruin their experiences.
(I'm also shamelessly going to split this post into two parts because I think this is an important point that wasn't made yet and needs to be discussed. This way it will get more attention)
We do have low-activity people in this community. I'm probably one of them. They will not drive the thread forward in a significant way, no matter how many posts you force them to make. The posts just will go down in quality. There are two ways to deal with this: Either ban them from our community, or try to make the games work despite them. The key here in my opinion is roster-balance. A game full of high-activity players will be very fun for those players, but a lot of work for the low-activity ones. The inverse case we can see with CW. I think we need to enforce more diverse rosters (activity-wise), even if that means that high-activity players have to carry a game they didn't even sign up for. As somebody said earlier: The game is just the framework; the core part is the interactions with the other players, so I hope that wouldn't ruin their experiences.
(I'm also shamelessly going to split this post into two parts because I think this is an important point that wasn't made yet and needs to be discussed. This way it will get more attention)
Flush
Poker Royalty
I love this. We have the requirement of doing commands in their own lines currently anyway. Two Hashtags don't hurt and makes automatic detection so much more failsafe.
I didn't even realize we had a replacement tool. That's very good and takes a lot of pressure off of me. I'll DM you.
Personally, I'm more active during the weekends. But I noticed that this community is the other way round and I have no idea why...
Fireblend
ABLF
It happened very quickly, I wrote it yesterday :P
In regards to font/colours, all I ask is that it is easy to read!
Certain fonts and certain colours are hard for me to read but the bold red combo has been fine for me.
Certain fonts and certain colours are hard for me to read but the bold red combo has been fine for me.
Kyanrute
kyan-rute
if post requirement 100
many great shitpost will be made
much money for kyaaa school of shitposting! enroll on classes today @ kyaaauniversi.ty/entrollment
On a more serious note, I personally like 72/48 for the 1st n days. Gives more leeway, I for one do not have the time or the #feels to participate on every single RL day. The safe, boring, non-hardcore option.
No strikes at all seems silly. Base line should be one, increase if the replacement pool is too deep a pit to gaze into.
many great shitpost will be made
much money for kyaaa school of shitposting! enroll on classes today @ kyaaauniversi.ty/entrollment
On a more serious note, I personally like 72/48 for the 1st n days. Gives more leeway, I for one do not have the time or the #feels to participate on every single RL day. The safe, boring, non-hardcore option.
No strikes at all seems silly. Base line should be one, increase if the replacement pool is too deep a pit to gaze into.
Zippedpinhead
Zip it!
I play during the work week. I have my family during the weekends. When I play too much on the weekends the wifey gets on me...
I like the ##vote as well. I do like the visual disparity of the red vote as well.
Natiko
Town's Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer
I think this is a pretty valid point but is dubious to balance. How would it be approached by the game runners? I guess you could have people list an expected activity level during sign ups but what dictates a high over a medium? Or would you only worry about those that feel they may be a low activity and try and split those between the games if possible? There would almost certainly have to be more behind the scenes shuffling and going to players and seeing if they’d be willing to swap games. It could get messy. I’m not disagreeing with the premise as I think it could help, just not sure how it would be incorporated.
It's been mentioned before as a possibility - asking people to list expected activity levels. I agree that there's advantages and disadvantages. Could be kinda cool if we all had little gamer cards with things like timezone, pronouns, activity level, activity during the week, etc., though it makes roster creation more of a pain. Still, might be useful. Might also be interesting to, once per season, run one game with a more competitive or cutthroat focus, with adjusted rules. I know there's been some discussion of the differences between competitive and laid back players.
Flush vs Zipped above to me is a great example of potential issues beyond 72/48, I think. With the no-weekends model, you miss people like Flush, who are more likely to be active on the weekends, and while I know Zipped spoke in favor of a 48/24, sometimes that phase is gonna be fully on the weekend, something the 72-hour day avoids with at least one RL day falling during the week. Gamerunners and sign-ups have to be very clear about what's going on if we're gonna experiment more, I think. This may be even more on players; gamerunners can put it in the info, but we as players need to take a second before signing up to a given game and ask ourselves if we can meet whatever that game's standard is. At least since I've been here, there hasn't been a ton of that, outside of a few people who have some interpersonal tension over play styles or whatever and who prefer not to be in games together.
Flush vs Zipped above to me is a great example of potential issues beyond 72/48, I think. With the no-weekends model, you miss people like Flush, who are more likely to be active on the weekends, and while I know Zipped spoke in favor of a 48/24, sometimes that phase is gonna be fully on the weekend, something the 72-hour day avoids with at least one RL day falling during the week. Gamerunners and sign-ups have to be very clear about what's going on if we're gonna experiment more, I think. This may be even more on players; gamerunners can put it in the info, but we as players need to take a second before signing up to a given game and ask ourselves if we can meet whatever that game's standard is. At least since I've been here, there hasn't been a ton of that, outside of a few people who have some interpersonal tension over play styles or whatever and who prefer not to be in games together.
Natiko
Town's Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer
Generally speaking I think being more proactive in replacing players and potentially trying to balance game rosters a little more or at least being mindful of how many low activity players are grouped together could be the most beneficial routes. I don’t know that upping the post count or changing the game cycle hours are going to help as much as the first two would. There’s always going to be people that can’t hit the requirement, but at least with those two things there would hopefully be less of them stacked in one game and they wouldn’t be able to linger so far into the game that replacements struggle to catch up.
@cabot Thank you for pointing out my suggestion for rule 3
@Sawneeks Thank you for accepting it as well.
Now though, let me start by saying that my point bellow should be seen as someone who played once and skimmed through Ted & Bill only, so I am for all intents and purposes still a newbie and my note may help avoid confusion for the future newbies.
Right, so if you put the new rule 3 in effect, you would have to edit rule 4 as well, as it will present a contradiction between the two.
As you can see from the bolded someone who have never played mafia, may easily get confused because on one hand rule 3 will say "do not post the content of your role pm" and on the other it will say "you may post the content of your role pm if it's a lie".
I know it may seem stupid and nipticky but honestly if I didn't play buffy, never read a game fully and see this two rules I would be confused as heck.
@Sawneeks Thank you for accepting it as well.
Now though, let me start by saying that my point bellow should be seen as someone who played once and skimmed through Ted & Bill only, so I am for all intents and purposes still a newbie and my note may help avoid confusion for the future newbies.
Right, so if you put the new rule 3 in effect, you would have to edit rule 4 as well, as it will present a contradiction between the two.
As you can see from the bolded someone who have never played mafia, may easily get confused because on one hand rule 3 will say "do not post the content of your role pm" and on the other it will say "you may post the content of your role pm if it's a lie".
I know it may seem stupid and nipticky but honestly if I didn't play buffy, never read a game fully and see this two rules I would be confused as heck.
Having just followed/participated in Console Wars, what I have to say is pretty much a reiteration of what people have already said regarding the lack of participation. Stricter enforcement of post requirements + regular warnings would alleviate this. I also agree with a point brought up earlier, where possibly looking at the posting habits of users and making a proper balance between active and low-activity posters in a game can help, too.
Another point I thought of, and I guess it was brought on by frustration with the low activity, is that there were many sentiments in CW about posters just not wanting to play anymore. All that does is bring the morale down, and leads others to not want to try as hard or participate as much. Less of that would be good.
Another point I thought of, and I guess it was brought on by frustration with the low activity, is that there were many sentiments in CW about posters just not wanting to play anymore. All that does is bring the morale down, and leads others to not want to try as hard or participate as much. Less of that would be good.
Hey monkey, why are you ignoring Hecht Rhythm? It's extending every other night to 48 hours (the one on the weekend) and you never ever face this problem?
About the 10 posts minimum, I think it's a fair number already and manageable by everyone, be it low activity posters (coasters) and in-depth posters.
Upping the limit may increase shit posting/gifs spamming and it will certainly decrease the quality of the dialogue and the game overall.
Issuing a warning and proceeding with a replacement if it is not respected seems fair to me, however I strongly disagree with the banning, it is unnecessarily harsh, off-putting and with a small community like ours we will just be driving away possible valuable members/contributers.
Let's remembers that people have a life and life can be unpredictable, tragedies, sickness...etc. may happen unexpectedly and I can assure you that some people will not even give a thought to their forum game during that time, imagine if they come back after the hardship and find a banning PM, how terrible is that?
Upping the limit may increase shit posting/gifs spamming and it will certainly decrease the quality of the dialogue and the game overall.
Issuing a warning and proceeding with a replacement if it is not respected seems fair to me, however I strongly disagree with the banning, it is unnecessarily harsh, off-putting and with a small community like ours we will just be driving away possible valuable members/contributers.
Let's remembers that people have a life and life can be unpredictable, tragedies, sickness...etc. may happen unexpectedly and I can assure you that some people will not even give a thought to their forum game during that time, imagine if they come back after the hardship and find a banning PM, how terrible is that?
A different issue which jumps to my mind while looking at Bill and Ted Mafia:
We've never put that much focus into readibility after a game ends. During most of the games we have updated first post with links to Day/Night starts, which is very useful (it's the single most valuable post during rereading for me).
But sometimes those updates just stop or are completely rudimentary like in HP. Even finding out who won can be a hassle because so many reactions come after the game ending post.
Have a spoiler with d/n starts and game ending post would be nice.
On the other hand I don't know of how much use this would be. The amount of people going back in time and reading games is surely not massive?
We've never put that much focus into readibility after a game ends. During most of the games we have updated first post with links to Day/Night starts, which is very useful (it's the single most valuable post during rereading for me).
But sometimes those updates just stop or are completely rudimentary like in HP. Even finding out who won can be a hassle because so many reactions come after the game ending post.
Have a spoiler with d/n starts and game ending post would be nice.
On the other hand I don't know of how much use this would be. The amount of people going back in time and reading games is surely not massive?
cabot
Why.
Also regarding phases, I still look at the main season games as the main way in for new players and a catch all for players of activity/engagement. This in tandem works with longer phases.
Midseason is for the hardcore players, and shorter phases for those is fine.
I'm okay with altering phase lengths to ignore most weekends as well.
Midseason is for the hardcore players, and shorter phases for those is fine.
I'm okay with altering phase lengths to ignore most weekends as well.
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Flush
Poker Royalty
Yes, it would make roster creation more difficult, but that's kind of the point. Let people classify themselves on an activity scale from 1 to 5 and rate each game from 1 to 5 according to how much they would want to play in it. Then apply some clever algorithm that provides the most overall happiness while forcing comparable overall activity numbers between games.
This concept also requires that if people misjudge themselves (e.g. StarSketch gives herself an activity rating of 3) we have to friendly but firmly tell them that if they keep playing like last game it's more of a rating x.
Yeah, I've noticed and that's why I always like to play when you're modding. You're simply the best.
Re: Activity based roster
We've had this in one season, when ynnny did all the coordinating, I think. Around S4-6? Might be worth looking into how these games turned out.
@Flush Five categories is too much, you know statistics, people will be reluctant to evaluate themselves as outliers (1/5) and converge to the middle anyway. Three should suffice, it's what we tried before as well. I don't know if we would artificially complicate our sign-ups though.
We've had this in one season, when ynnny did all the coordinating, I think. Around S4-6? Might be worth looking into how these games turned out.
@Flush Five categories is too much, you know statistics, people will be reluctant to evaluate themselves as outliers (1/5) and converge to the middle anyway. Three should suffice, it's what we tried before as well. I don't know if we would artificially complicate our sign-ups though.
nin1000
Chilean German Madman
Thats a good point. I was very close to just throw the towel and say you know what fuck it but then i thought about the small minority that put in a lot of energy into the game.
We did it in the past for a reason to mix in high activity and lower acitivity players in one game, i would love to see that coming back in orde to not let this happen again.
Regarding warnings, yes we should be stricter. A LOT stricter in my eyes. The slacking was getting out of hand in my game and it just came off as very insulting towards those that put so much energy building and playing the game. That was also my fault for not pulling through and just thinking it would be fixed if i let them keep on slacking.
I think if there are a good mix of low and high act. Posters in one game the last point wont be happening.
Of course there will be an occasional player who calls out the other for being inactive but it wont be in that extreme like in CW. Where the whole morale of the complete game was kinda ruined.
The most important point though should be a huge banner reminding everyone that it is a commitement to join up for a game. In my game especially it seemed that everyone was eager to join it but as soon as they recieved the role pm‘s the hype kinda died out.
Regarding the minimum of 10 posts per day. If there are repeated offenders throughout several games, i would be for somthing like a list of shame. I get that real life should be above all, but then again if you sign up for it you made a commitement.
nin1000
Chilean German Madman
Same, i have been in lower activity games aswell in the very first mafia game. I liked them for what they were , but if you have players in a game that dont even put in much effort into the game to begin with, thats where it starts to become a problem.
It has been done in the past and was kinda accepted aswell as part of it, i am unsure when it was decided to cut it out but a good variety is very important. In my opinion it should be brought back or similiar problems that caused CW to be this graveyard will come back and haunt the players.
I'm not? I mentioned it several times?
I do like your point about thread readability. Never considered updating for the end-that's great. But those day/night end links are something I use a lot when I play and I wish they were standard.
Faddy
of, having, or involving transitory whims
On voting I hadn't realised how bad it is to vote on Resetera. On here and on gaf all you had to do was type out the highlight tag (at least that is what I did)
on Era you need to hit the tiny bold button, then the colour button, then pick the right colour. Then switch the colour back once you are done if you are going to post more. The idea to always make votes the last line in a post just adds more restrictions. We should be making things easier. I think moving to
##VOTE: Faddy
as a standard vote is way easier, especially on mobile. Two hashtags and no formatting, separate line.
Then people can mess about colours/fonts/sizes etc in their posts if they want but votes are always plaintext.
on Era you need to hit the tiny bold button, then the colour button, then pick the right colour. Then switch the colour back once you are done if you are going to post more. The idea to always make votes the last line in a post just adds more restrictions. We should be making things easier. I think moving to
##VOTE: Faddy
as a standard vote is way easier, especially on mobile. Two hashtags and no formatting, separate line.
Then people can mess about colours/fonts/sizes etc in their posts if they want but votes are always plaintext.
Yep. That'll put us back to something easier to manage for new and old players alike than what we have right now.
Splinter
Lord of Volcano Island
Yeah I wasn't talking about CW as I didn't follow it, and I won't deny that games can have too little activity to the point that it ruins them.
I'm just making the point that designing rosters takes out a bit of variety and I don't think it's necessary (or desirable)
In terms of inactivity, I think the best way to deal with it is to immediately replace players who don't meet the minimum post count without a previous warning to the gamerunners. I understand that RL issues may arise and make someone unavailable for a few days, but we must also understand that disappearing from a game entirely for more than one day phase is terribly disruptive and can eventually ruin the experience for everyone else.
One of my scummates in Buffy had RL issues and wasn't available during most of D1, and couldn't participate at all during D2. They were probably the most suspicious scum during D1, but no one was able to question them about it until D3 because they weren't there. And even when they were replaced, it was hard to question their replacement about things another player did. And so we had a fishy scum character who was basically immune to lynches for three day phases.
Fortunately, this one occurrence in particular didn't result in a ruined game at all - but it's not hard to imagine how two or three similar cases in the same game could easily end up having that effect.
To me, replacing that player during N1 would've been the least disruptive scenario.
I think I'd even be in favor of a no tolerance rule for D1 inactivity, but I haven't thought that through yet.
On the other hand, I'm also completely against any kind of long-term punishment for inactivity-related issues. No one stays inactive in bad faith, and so having a deterrence-based punishment system in place wouldn't have an effect at all (other than making the entire experience more stressful for players who were facing RL issues).
One of my scummates in Buffy had RL issues and wasn't available during most of D1, and couldn't participate at all during D2. They were probably the most suspicious scum during D1, but no one was able to question them about it until D3 because they weren't there. And even when they were replaced, it was hard to question their replacement about things another player did. And so we had a fishy scum character who was basically immune to lynches for three day phases.
Fortunately, this one occurrence in particular didn't result in a ruined game at all - but it's not hard to imagine how two or three similar cases in the same game could easily end up having that effect.
To me, replacing that player during N1 would've been the least disruptive scenario.
I think I'd even be in favor of a no tolerance rule for D1 inactivity, but I haven't thought that through yet.
On the other hand, I'm also completely against any kind of long-term punishment for inactivity-related issues. No one stays inactive in bad faith, and so having a deterrence-based punishment system in place wouldn't have an effect at all (other than making the entire experience more stressful for players who were facing RL issues).
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Sawneeks
little green dog
I will take a look at this one as well. Thank you Include. :>
I agree, it's something that is immensely helpful during a game and would be helpful after a game as well if people needed to go back. We'll start making a push for it to be universal.
Sawneeks
little green dog
In regards to Activity Levels when making the rosters I have a few thoughts there since I'm now making the rosters themselves.
The one biggest issue I can see with taking Activity Level into account for making a roster is that it is highly likely people will not end up in the game they want to play. If we have two games and each end up with different ends of the activity levels then people will have to be moved around. I know some people are more than okay with this but not everyone is so if this did become a factor we would need people to be more lenient on what games they place in. Of course, New Players will always have the right-of-way with games so this is more towards the Vets here.
And Splinter does have a point, it would disrupt a bit of the differences in activity that some of our games naturally have. We do want to avoid having games that just stall though, so I understand the want for this.
Currently I'm working on a Poll for a couple of the potential changes we're talking about here and this will be one of them. In the end we want whatever the community wants moving forward but this is also the time to work it out and discuss it too.
The one biggest issue I can see with taking Activity Level into account for making a roster is that it is highly likely people will not end up in the game they want to play. If we have two games and each end up with different ends of the activity levels then people will have to be moved around. I know some people are more than okay with this but not everyone is so if this did become a factor we would need people to be more lenient on what games they place in. Of course, New Players will always have the right-of-way with games so this is more towards the Vets here.
And Splinter does have a point, it would disrupt a bit of the differences in activity that some of our games naturally have. We do want to avoid having games that just stall though, so I understand the want for this.
Currently I'm working on a Poll for a couple of the potential changes we're talking about here and this will be one of them. In the end we want whatever the community wants moving forward but this is also the time to work it out and discuss it too.
Sawneeks
little green dog
Hey everyone! So, we threw together a Poll here to see where we are at with some of the hot topics here including Text changes, 10 Post Minimum Warnings, and Activity Levels for the rosters. Once we get the general idea of which direction people want the most we can make changes based on that.
Thank you again everyone for chiming in!
Thank you again everyone for chiming in!
Concerning activity roster again - the discussion came up after season 3 and people stated their level before S4. It was also the first time preferred games could be mentioned.
I don't know how yn coordinated that stuff maybe there is more in the review threads. But for the following seasons we didn't go back to the activity idea, I don't think there was a particular reason given.
I don't know how yn coordinated that stuff maybe there is more in the review threads. But for the following seasons we didn't go back to the activity idea, I don't think there was a particular reason given.
I don't think you're going to solve issues people have with player activity by mandate. You'll raise the floor of posts but not the quality of engagement that you're getting from players. Fundamentally as long as people don't take the game seriously, as long as they don't take the time commitment seriously, you're going to have these issues. This is a problem of culture that runs through the community. I recall the pushback I got in The Invitational for wanting to lynch inactive players in day 1, because apparently it wasn't 'fair' or we didn't know anything about them. This coddling of inactivity or non-contribution to the game, of tolerating and commending behaviour that makes games worse and less interesting, is exactly what contributes to issues like these.
Players need to take games seriously and particularly recognize that we are all responsible for the quality of game being played. I understand if you're new or a weaker player it can be enticing to sit back and not say anything but if that's all you're going to do every game why are you playing? you need to at least make the effort.
Moderators should take an interest in how their game is going and be willing to push and prod players.
Also don't fuck around and stack player lists, either. You're asking for headaches and heartbreaks and even once you've built the roster there's no guarantee things are going to work out.
If you can't live up to the time commitment you shouldn't sign up. If something comes up and you can no longer live up to your time commitment you should ask for a replacement, if you're bored and not paying attention you should ask for a replacement and seriously consider whether this was a one-off thing or if you should consider not signing up for games. Don't make the game worse for other players in it.
Players need to take games seriously and particularly recognize that we are all responsible for the quality of game being played. I understand if you're new or a weaker player it can be enticing to sit back and not say anything but if that's all you're going to do every game why are you playing? you need to at least make the effort.
Moderators should take an interest in how their game is going and be willing to push and prod players.
Also don't fuck around and stack player lists, either. You're asking for headaches and heartbreaks and even once you've built the roster there's no guarantee things are going to work out.
If you can't live up to the time commitment you shouldn't sign up. If something comes up and you can no longer live up to your time commitment you should ask for a replacement, if you're bored and not paying attention you should ask for a replacement and seriously consider whether this was a one-off thing or if you should consider not signing up for games. Don't make the game worse for other players in it.
I do agree with that. And I don't mean people who just post less, but contribute, which is why hard and past post cap rules don't fix this after a minimum. Some people are just different; it takes them a day phase or two to get warmed up.
But there are times when things are going on and we need to make the call to ask to be replaced. Or it turns out the idea of mafia was more fun than the game and the work of it. Sub out.
It takes some self reflection and consideration. But I think that would help activity too. If you find yourself forgetting about the thread or kinda dreading it, maybe sub out and have a break.
I find that running Buffy made me think about activity differently; I looked less at post counts and more at what people were contributing. It changed my perspective a bit. I think we do need a minimum but it's fine where it is. We need good buy in, though. That makes good games.
But there are times when things are going on and we need to make the call to ask to be replaced. Or it turns out the idea of mafia was more fun than the game and the work of it. Sub out.
It takes some self reflection and consideration. But I think that would help activity too. If you find yourself forgetting about the thread or kinda dreading it, maybe sub out and have a break.
I find that running Buffy made me think about activity differently; I looked less at post counts and more at what people were contributing. It changed my perspective a bit. I think we do need a minimum but it's fine where it is. We need good buy in, though. That makes good games.
Honestly for something that may change the way this community works, I don't think that using surveymonkey is the way to go. I know the code of honor and all that but these kind of websites can easily be manipulated as they sometimes don't even require IP check or a valid email address check (which yes there are works around but still be annoying enough to go through the effort).
Imagine we have one troll or one very opinionated and stubborn person that demands their choices to be accepted, thanks to the above link they can easily vote a hundred of times and their choices will be the one selected.
Solutions:
1. Use the forum with the anonymous votes option (Create a thread for each question if necessary and summarize the links on one index), yes it's a lot of work for the admins but the results will be real and from our community not an external influence or easy to manipulate.
2. Use a tool (website) that require email validation, ip check and captcha. (not bulletproof but annoying enough for people not to play the system easily).
This is my honest opinion on the matter, I hope I didn't offend anyone.
Exactly! haha.
Seriously though, I may be just too paranoid but we do have resetera detractors and they are crazy enough to mess with any community but even without those detractors and from my own experience on the matter I always choose the least easily manipulated option when conducting a survey :p
But hey this community is small and honest and perhaps there is nothing to worry about in the first place, especially if this survey is just as a suggestion and not really a sure implementation.
We are only 50?.... That's a lot smaller than what I thought... I was thinking more like +150 members.
Include, I will let you do this if you complete the following captcha jigsaw:
Good luck!
I would but I am 85 years old and my doctor told me not to strain my eyes.
Now I sort of hope you actually are, because that would be badass.
As for survey tools, if we ever have an issue, I have secure tools at my disposal, thanks to research work, so if we need it, I got us.
There in fact, may uh, be a survey coming in a month or two when it's approved by institutional review. >.>
nin1000
Chilean German Madman
Well said.
This is something that every single one of us and or the community as a whole has to work on. Be better! Try to improve or just don't sign up if you think you don't have the time for it.
Sawneeks
little green dog
No, I understand. And you aren't the only person to have expressed that worry.
We're keeping an eye on the responses. So far it's in line with the previous survey numbers so don't worry there. If we suddenly jump up to 60+ responses then I'd be worried.
Pedro is actually putting together a new Data Sheet and we went over the numbers...in total we've had over 230 people player mafia in this community. Some people only played once or have come and gone but 50 seems about right for the really active pool of people.
Yeah that was hectic. Damnit Sophia. Led to a fun, but arguably OP arsonist though.
Didn't know people actually liked WW2 that much. Making me want to create another game!
do it
Also, I haven't seen it mentioned but.... would be super if I could simply post a game, ask for sign ups, and then manually choose who gets to play in my game. I guess sorta like the invitational? Simultaneously, I wish the order of games was less curated, but that's mostly because I'm impatient with our pace, and when I want to run a game, I want to run it right away, not in 3 months or whatever when it's my turn.
Also can a mod out here change my name now that my game is over?
Edit: Also, I'm a bit mad that I literally raged about quoting role PMs several games ago, and it's still an issue. I still FIRMLY believe our role PMs should be more standardized across games. Of course, I favor that they are sterilized from fluff, but that's me.
Also, if it didn't come up yet, why wasn't town's win-con in console wars the standardized one either? That caused some unnecessary headaches.
Also can a mod out here change my name now that my game is over?
Edit: Also, I'm a bit mad that I literally raged about quoting role PMs several games ago, and it's still an issue. I still FIRMLY believe our role PMs should be more standardized across games. Of course, I favor that they are sterilized from fluff, but that's me.
Also, if it didn't come up yet, why wasn't town's win-con in console wars the standardized one either? That caused some unnecessary headaches.
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Hecht
Like dubstep for my bootyhole
I'm all for zero tolerance with this stuff, but again, the main problem then is just the number of replacement and the effect that modkills can have on a game as a whole.
Sawneeks
little green dog
So we crunched the numbers, ran the calculations, triple checked the math, voted Town for good luck, and got the conclusions to the survey!
What we’re looking at are these changes/tightening of the rules. Properly worded Rulings will be made but these are the general idea:
I’ll be personally writing up the new rules and additions and announcing them in the OT. We’ll also be clarifying some things and talking a bit more about the Highlight Tag.
Thanks again everyone for talking things through here. :>
What we’re looking at are these changes/tightening of the rules. Properly worded Rulings will be made but these are the general idea:
I’ll be personally writing up the new rules and additions and announcing them in the OT. We’ll also be clarifying some things and talking a bit more about the Highlight Tag.
Thanks again everyone for talking things through here. :>
CrimsonFist
Neutral Vanilla
That font solution is pretty much what I wrote in, so clearly democracy works.
Sawneeks
little green dog
It was a discussion we had about what to do. Colors were banned because, like Nat said, it makes it terrible to read on some themes and some people have legitimate trouble reading them. Tiny fonts got banned because of poor readability on mobile.
trust me i'm also sad tiny fonts are banned :'(
trust me i'm also sad tiny fonts are banned :'(
Someone should make a game that has a role with Haiku that each night you can infect someone else with the Haiku, forcing them to speak for the rest of the game too.
Imagine trying to play a whole mafia game only speaking haikus
Imagine trying to play a whole mafia game only speaking haikus
I don't know about the other 50% who voted against it but to answer this one out, I use my TV as a computer screen, so I am usually away from it and already zoomed in as far as I can while still being able to maintain a good readability, so tiny font are a pain to try to read unless I zoom in +250% or something and zoom out again to continue reading the rest of the text.
But for normal PC users they are sitting next to their screen so it's not an issue, same goes for mobile with the easy zoomed in option.
For font colors it's an issue with some themes where you need to highlight the text to be able to read it and it's even more annoying on mobile to do so.
I struggled with this question before voting, on one hand I enjoyed blarg funny posts and everyone who kinda played with fonts...etc. But on the hand the accessibility was terrible, thus my vote went for the latter.
But like I said my case is special, I don't know about the rest of the voters :p
The special cases do have to decide this one, though. We are listening - please know that - and we're not trying to be no fun here. We're trying to make sure people are accommodated.
And none of this is set in stone. We are all still getting used to Era's options, which are far more than what we're used to, and just trying to figure out the best direction for the community.
And none of this is set in stone. We are all still getting used to Era's options, which are far more than what we're used to, and just trying to figure out the best direction for the community.
Splinter
Lord of Volcano Island
Sooo is there a reason that midseason is currently structured as it is?
Right now we are in a situation where we have more than enough people for one game, but not enough for two, so all those people waiting to play are just stuck waiting for... a second game to be filled?
I can (kind of) understand this for main season: it's our main recruitment drive with the new thread and whatnot to get in as many players as possible and especially appeal to new players. That's cool.
I just don't see why we do the same thing for mid season. The combined spec thread? But that has as many negatives as positives.
My suggestion is that mid season is simply the games that run in between main seasons. Games are run as and when there are enough players willing to sign up to them, with each sign up period including the usual information about the current game being applied for but also a brief description of the next 1 or 2 games on the schedule (in case people want to wait for a particular set up). This continues until we have enough main season games ready to go, or for some minimum amount of time (I don't know what the pipeline for main season games looks like at the moment).
Possible downsides? Timing could be inconvenient for the gamerunner I guess? But that only leads to schedule changes and maybe some salt from anyone waiting for a specific game.
This isn't a huge change from the current system, just eliminates the once per midseason thing where we try to fill multiple games at once, since it feels kinda pointless.
Thoughts?
Right now we are in a situation where we have more than enough people for one game, but not enough for two, so all those people waiting to play are just stuck waiting for... a second game to be filled?
I can (kind of) understand this for main season: it's our main recruitment drive with the new thread and whatnot to get in as many players as possible and especially appeal to new players. That's cool.
I just don't see why we do the same thing for mid season. The combined spec thread? But that has as many negatives as positives.
My suggestion is that mid season is simply the games that run in between main seasons. Games are run as and when there are enough players willing to sign up to them, with each sign up period including the usual information about the current game being applied for but also a brief description of the next 1 or 2 games on the schedule (in case people want to wait for a particular set up). This continues until we have enough main season games ready to go, or for some minimum amount of time (I don't know what the pipeline for main season games looks like at the moment).
Possible downsides? Timing could be inconvenient for the gamerunner I guess? But that only leads to schedule changes and maybe some salt from anyone waiting for a specific game.
This isn't a huge change from the current system, just eliminates the once per midseason thing where we try to fill multiple games at once, since it feels kinda pointless.
Thoughts?
Natiko
Town's Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer
My first midseason wasn’t because I participated in almost every midseason game that season.
Splinter
Lord of Volcano Island
I think our average is around 21 (unless it dropped recently), so it's not that much bigger.
Not always, but I think we do this about once per midseason.
Sawneeks
little green dog
To be honest, plans kinda got borked.
Originally Buffy was supposed to run up until around this time if not close to the end of the month but due to it...ah...imploding a little bit that timeline got shifted dramatically.
It was going to be: Console Wars ended and BuBu Mafia began to fill the gap. Both BuBu and Buffy would end around the end of the month, we'd take some time off, and then the two Mid Season games would get announced + sign ups for them would start. Both Sneakers and HvV were picked because Sneakers is relatively small and HvV is just above what we normally do, making it equal out for a good group of players to have a game to play in. We've been proven wrong with this though...while we have a huge amount of people signing up right now you are right, we have enough for one but not for two. It's something I'll remember going forward to schedule mid-season games.
But things kinda got messed up. Honestly we probably should have either held off on BuBu or held the Mid Season games until that one ended. But a lot of that is hindsight since Buck Bumble started before Buffy imploded and we had no idea that would happen.
To answer your suggestion though that is what I would love to have happen. I'd love to get it to a point where we could announce every single mid-season game ahead of time so people know what to expect. The problem is....we have a lot of games being made but not a lot of games actually ready to go. So I can't really make a schedule and say 'for the next 3 months we will have X, Y, or Z available' because those games might not even be ready and something else might run in its' place.
And for running the games as they fill up is how these two are currently going to work. They have a 48 hour window so people from different timezones have a chance to sign up in case a game fills up immediately since priority is in effect. If either Sneakers or HvV had the players it needed to run they would start as soon as the timer ended. But I agree it's a good thing to do going forward for Mid-Season, gets things going faster.
Splinter
Lord of Volcano Island
That initial plan is needlessly complicated though, which is kind of my point.
Bubu (lol) *is* a midseason game. It was even advertised/released at about the right time: one main season game had ended and the other was winding down.
If HvV had advertised alone that would also have been about the right time, would be filled and starting by now. Then when Bubu ends and HvV is about halfway through you'd probably have enough players to advertise/run sneakers, etc.
I realise I'm sitting on the sidelines and shitting on a lot of work :p I just think you're making things more difficult for yourselves. (You don't need a fully scheduled mid season either, just "signups for x are now open, we're expecting y to run next, z is also ready and queued" ok I'll stop now)
Bubu (lol) *is* a midseason game. It was even advertised/released at about the right time: one main season game had ended and the other was winding down.
If HvV had advertised alone that would also have been about the right time, would be filled and starting by now. Then when Bubu ends and HvV is about halfway through you'd probably have enough players to advertise/run sneakers, etc.
I realise I'm sitting on the sidelines and shitting on a lot of work :p I just think you're making things more difficult for yourselves. (You don't need a fully scheduled mid season either, just "signups for x are now open, we're expecting y to run next, z is also ready and queued" ok I'll stop now)