Elements the Game Forum - Free Online Fantasy Card Game
Other Topics => Forum Games => Off-Topic Discussions => Forum Game Archive => Topic started by: Linkcat on June 08, 2017, 05:15:14 am
-
Elements Mafia has had an interesting history. When I returned in Mafia 46, we were consistently getting 20+ players per mafia, but due to its casual nature, post counts were low and individual players impacted the game with roles more than with reads. We had unbalanced setups, and even some broken ones. People still signed up, because it was fun. The waiting list for hosts was over a year long.
Ever since we were first invited to the Mafia Championships a year ago, a subset of players have been trying to emulate the play we saw there and slowly push Elements Mafia in a more discussion-heavy direction. Talk outside of the thread was banned. Roles were made more reasonable. This resulted in the highest posting games we've had on the site, but not everyone was happy with this direction. People stopped signing up for various related and unrelated reasons, but at the same time, setups were getting better. Mafia hit a slump for a while.
Then, Kuro hosted Mafia 68. With old players returning, it was the greatest game Elements Mafia had ever seen, both in gameplay and post count. Unfortunately, not everyone enjoyed the tremendous volume, and the general burnout resulted in Mafia 69 ending in less than 100 posts with half the players.
It was clear that we needed a break from mafia.
There has to be a balance. There has to be a way for people — most of them, at least — to be happy. I aim to find this balance, because it's my job to find it. Answering these polls and having discussions in the thread will help me with that. If none of the options in a poll fit your position, please explain why.
To all of the people who have lost interest in mafia, I have two more questions.
First: Why did you leave?
Second, and much more importantly: What would make you come back?
-
Okay, time to add responses:
1). Never actually left, but I did leave the FGO position for many reasons (including, but not limited to, real life and other forum duties during 'war season).
2). I don't know what it would take for me to be -as- active as I was in the past, although I will admit that I'm a far better host than I am player, since my playstyle tends to usually be a disaster or a very "touch and go" success. I would probably be more active in the forum games section if... uh... I could come up with a new awesome game idea (not ESC). ^^;
-
1. I'm much more of a casual player and reading many pages of discussion is a chore for me. I'm also not very skilled, crap at reading players, and rather gullible, so in a MU-style game I'm very easily overwhelmed and not likely to enjoy the game.
2. More casual games would make me come back, however, this would normally be by virtue of the players rather than by the host or the setup. Unless the setup is especially ridiculous or bastard, I don't think there's a way to guarantee a casual game. If a particularly "standard" setup comes along (a few mafia, a cop, etc, but mostly vanilla), designed to reduce distraction by roles and emphasise player skills and discussion, I probably wouldn't join.
-
1. I enjoyed the more casual style of gameplay, based on roles and not on reading 25 pages per day. I didn't feel that it was a chore and it was actually fun and interesting. Once Linkcat participated in that mafia championship and we adopted their style of play, I stopped having fun, I had no idea what the hell was going on since I wasn't going to read that much and I was lynched on the base that I wasn't posting much.
2. Pretty much nothing, we'll still have 3-4 people that dish out 300 posts in a matter of days and I'll still be lynched because I don't post that much.
-
Completely agree with what's already been said. Mafia was much more fun when it took itself less seriously. See root's pokemon mafia, best one imo
-
A few notes on my votes
1, I voted for the "I like crazy set ups" thing, but that is taken with a grain of salt. I like them /sometimes/ having crazy anything a few times in a row could easily make it beyond boring, and frustrating
2, I voted for the "im less interested if I have a vanilla role" Which again is taken with salt. I am less interested but /that doesn't mean Im not going to play/ I think its insulting when players drop after getting vanilla. Yes, I understand you have less forced impact on the game than someone else, but theres a certain amount of respect involved. Its respectful to read all the rules and ask questions if there are any. Its respectful to play to the best of your ability regardless of the circumstance.
Onto the questions link has asked
1st: I've left at various times, for one reason or another, but I always try to play when I can. After a particularly annoying death, or an annoying set up, or a role set where I simply had limited to no control of my fate Ive needed a break, but lord knows these games are better with more people, so I've made an effort to attend them all
2nd: Since the spark in my eyes has dwindled in relation to mafia, I'll answer this as well. It comes as no surprise my opinion on the hardcore play group that has taken up the elements mafia, while I use that opinion in game for various reasons, I really generally care very little. It came at a time where mafia was, and lets be honest here, quite stupid. We had dumb roles and dumb set ups, and really theyve added quite a bit to the mafia meta, and very little of it is bad.
That being said, the post count is a burden. I make a real solid effort to stay caught up, but if you miss a day, thats 10+ pages to sift through, and in addition, being gone a day is a oneway ticket to suspect city.
But without those players driving the game, the post count hits rock bottom and its like no one is playing at all. Take last game for instance, rob had more posts than I think half the players at day 2, and he wasnt even in the game. I get that some folks want to distance themselves from the intense play required for the serious players, but theres no middleground yet, we either get a full active, VERY intense game or we get 10 people who take turns shooting themselves. Frankly, I dont know how to help that
-
Ever since we were first invited to the Mafia Championships a year ago, a subset of players have been trying to emulate the play we saw there and slowly push Elements Mafia in a more discussion-heavy direction.
I want to point out that even before Mafia Championships, there were players using high-level strategies. implosion (the best mafia player this forum has seen, prior to rob), Demagog (second best), karthikking (was active on mafiascum), Terroking, and...well, myself, honestly.
The divide between casual and hardcore existed before Championships - that just accentuated it.
Talk outside of the thread was banned. Roles were made more reasonable. This resulted in the highest posting games we've had on the site, but not everyone was happy with this direction. People stopped signing up for various related and unrelated reasons, but at the same time, setups were getting better. Mafia hit a slump for a while.
Talk outside the thread should exist on this forum, if we want mafia to be viable here in the future. We need to find a middle-ground between casual and hardcore. The first mafia community I played with was an irc channel with a mafia bot (yes, chat=/=forum, but the core is still the same), and it struck that balance well. Part of the reason for that was allowing discussion in PMs, it gave less serious players an avenue to develop strategies specific to that game.
Essentially, we should aim to be serious enough that people simply should not play if they can't skim a day's worth of medium posting, but that's really all we should require. Everyone who's posted in this thread is capable of what I'd like to see - check in every few hours, skim for a few minutes, comment for a few minutes, or check every day and skim for a bit longer and post for a bit longer. Even in my most active games I skim through the thread and only go back and reread when something important is brought up. My play in Kuro's mafia, for example, should be on the high end of activity here, not middling or low as it would be in high-level play.
Basically casual players need to put in some effort, because mafia is best that way, playing too casually has straight up thrown games here - but hardcore players need to realize this is not a high-level community and they need to tone their activity and expectations of casual players down to match.
Additionally, I think we need to make chat mafia (and call it that, because chatfia is such a stupid word...but that's an argument for another day) more official, because it's much easier to tailor to a casual audience, since the time requirement is condensed to 1-2 hours instead of weeks.
First: Why did you leave?
Second, and much more importantly: What would make you come back?
I moved in and out of mafia here for a while because I cherry picked games that I could either justify playing at my desired level (e.g. Kuro's), or games that were innately geared towards casual play so those players would remain engaged (e.g. sky's). I would continuing doing so if a good compromise is not found, but I expect such a compromise would lead me to play most mafias here.
even in meta threads I'm making walls of text
My votes:
Talking during the Night should be removed to give players a break during the game if there are a high number if signups or posts.
I prefer discussion to be allowed outside of the thread.
I prefer there to be a lot of impactful/interesting roles or mechanics.
I do not mind if there are ridiculous roles in the game.
I do not mind having a vanilla role.
I did not vote in 'Setups' because my answer is kind of the first two answers and kind of not. The current system is good, setups have vastly improved, both in engagement of gameplay and balance. Occasionally falling back on a familiar setup or archetype is good, but shouldn't be the norm, and when done something should be changed.
-
The biggest problem with forum mafia, is that mafia is made to be a chat game. You need interactions between players, and having it be instant makes for removing the ''I was away for 2 hours and now I got to read 10 pages'' factor.
-
I think a new Blab room, active only during Chat Mafia and moderated solely by the FGO + game host + possibly a few others selected by FGO is the best way to go. But that sounds like a lot of effort to set up.
-
Unless a game is filled with people who I know will reliably not flake and force me - filthy, incompetent me - to drive the game, I don't think I'll be playing a mafia on this site again. I'm tired of having to be the one who drives a team. Stop being scrubs q.q
You can cut away half of any given mafia game's players and the thread would look exactly the same; What I think would be productive is finding out how to solve that problem in particular. Some potential issues regarding scrubs being scrubs include but are not limited to:
(Note: I'm not saying any of these are true.)
- There are too many posts and too many things to follow.
- The games drag out for too long and I lose interest.
- There are too many roles/people to track (I hated role madness back in the day)
- My role is boring. I'm a scrub so I need a role to be useful.
- The community is too punishing. If I talk, they'll criticise me and then I'll be lynched for fumbling.
- The community is too harsh. They're so aggressive and it puts a dampener on my mood.
- The community doesn't talk. If they don't talk, I can't make opinions about them.
- Having discussion outside of thread makes it really hard for me to catch up if anything happens.
- Having discussion inside of thread makes it really hard for me to understand what's going on because I can't just ask someone for a quick TL;DR and get a quick answer in the chat.
If any of these resonate with you less active folk, please do speak up. I won't judge you.
-
Based on the feedback I've received so far, the plan I'm currently considering goes like this:
Elements Mafia will be split into two types of mafia.
Normal mafias will mostly stay the same. Games will start on Day 1. Discussion will be limited to the thread. If there is a high post volume on Day 1, say 15 pages, players will not be allowed to talk during the Night for the rest of the game. Most or all players will be given a role, but nothing too crazy.
Alternating with normal mafias, we will have a new type of mafia called Light Mafia. These will be more similar to how mafia used to be played, but with more balanced setups. They will not be numbered mafias and will not count for Master of Mafia points. Discussion will be allowed outside of the thread. Each player will have a post limit of 15 posts every Day Phase, and 10 posts every Night Phase. The last 20 minutes of each Day Phase will be unrestricted. Attempting to get around the post limit by making very large posts will not be allowed. Everyone will be given a role, and expect to have more powerful and/or "fun" roles in the game.
Setups should be geared towards one of these types of mafia. There is a setup that was created a while ago by Coffee, kdz, and myself, that will act as the successor to the standard mafia setup that I tried to implement in Mafia 65. It can easily be modified to fit both types of mafia, and there are enough roles to pull from that each game will be different. The next mafia will be a Light Mafia run with this setup, and it will be used whenever there is no sufficient setup ready to be hosted.
This honestly seems like a better method than trying to please everyone with every mafia. Thoughts?
-
Splitting up the game seems like an excellent idea to me.
Why not use a separate numbering system for Light Mafias?
I agree that they should not contribute to MoM points but I think that the post limit and ban on long posts is a little sketchy. Having said that, I know I'm unlikely to post 15 times a day but I feel like a better rule would be something like "one player can't have more than 30% of a day's posts" unless of course there aren't many players left.
Perhaps something like no more than 2/(number of players) with a 30% minimum, but now's no time for specifics
I don't think there should be a length limit
-
Light Mafias will of course be numbered sequentially. They just won't be a part of the main series.
There is no ban on long posts. What I want to prevent is people condensing what would normally be 50 posts into 15 posts to try to get around the restriction. The post limit rules can really just be read as, 'Don't make a large amount of posts.' Numbers are subject to change. A percentage rule is too hard to implement and doesn't actually solve the problem.
-
It would be nice if this limit is a soft limit. Sometimes you get into an argument with another player and you end uptrading a page worth of posts each over something, and players that are getting bussed may need more posts to defend themselves.
And by soft limit I mean that you're allowed to bend that limit under circumstances like once a game. Really I just disagree with a hard and fast post limit
-
Linkcat hates breadposting confirmed
-
This honestly seems like a better method than trying to please everyone with every mafia. Thoughts?
Part of my point is that this is an unrealistic goal - I think what we should be trying to do is please most people with most mafias. The mafia community here is already pretty small, splitting it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The level of mafia we had before was actually pretty nice, it was middle-ground, with a good mix of skill and activity levels but there wasn't a divide. Over time it started to separate, but I don't see it as unreasonable to find ways to get the groups to comfortably coexist again. If making two groups is desired, I think forum/chat rather than forum/forum is ideally
Having all mafias allow discussion outside the thread and no talking during night phase, casual and hardcore players having some level of understanding for the other group, and gearing all setups to allow for both depth and familiarity would probably solve most of our issues. Essentially Espi's points are all pretty valid - we should be avoiding to mimimize those:
- There are too many posts and too many things to follow. oot/no night posting, player understanding
- The games drag out for too long and I lose interest. setups
- There are too many roles/people to track (I hated role madness back in the day) setups
- My role is boring. I'm a scrub so I need a role to be useful. setups - also this mentality just needs to end
- The community is too punishing. If I talk, they'll criticise me and then I'll be lynched for fumbling. player understanding
- The community is too harsh. They're so aggressive and it puts a dampener on my mood. player understanding
- The community doesn't talk. If they don't talk, I can't make opinions about them. player understanding, setups
- Having discussion outside of thread makes it really hard for me to catch up if anything happens. this is really the only one my points don't cover -
oot thread discussion should ultimately be moved to in-thread but starting some discussions in chat makes them more palatable for less active players
- Having discussion inside of thread makes it really hard for me to understand what's going on because I can't just ask someone for a quick TL;DR and get a quick answer in the chat. oot/no night posting
-
I don't think we're splitting the community at all - there's no reason that players can't participate in both. I would say that not providing a Light Mafia is more splitting than to do so, as I know that I'm unlikely to participate in Regular Mafia
A trial run can't hurt.
-
I would say that not providing a Light Mafia is more splitting than to do so, as I know that I'm unlikely to participate in Regular Mafia
That's exactly why I dislike it. Many casual players would agree with you, and we'd have a very small number playing regular mafias. At that point we'd basically just be down to light mafias, because forum mafia with that few people is unfun, even with high activity. So nothing really changes, a group of the playerbase is unhappy, just the other side.
I far prefer designing mafias that work for both sides.
-
Completely agree with what's already been said. Mafia was much more fun when it took itself less seriously. See root's pokemon mafia, best one imo
Oh thanks! Anyone is free to re-host it (probably with a couple balance changes regarding voting power lol)
-
Dd brings up a valid point, though it is based on an assumption that in the event of their being two mafia, people will only play the casual one. I'm not quite sure I agree with that, but it's something we should consider
-
The problem is, there is no mafia that works for both sides. I made this topic to try to figure out a way to create such a mafia, but I see now that it's just not feasible. No matter how well designed a ruleset is, a significant portion of players simply don't enjoy games with a high volume. If we take a middle-of-the-road approach, these players won't know if they'll enjoy the game or not, so they just won't sign up. The polls show that we'll lose people from the other end as well.
The idea of the split mafia system is that every person who has any interest in mafia will be able to look at one or both of these types of mafia and think, "This is the mafia that I want to play." I expect most people to sign up for both types. Another way to look at it is that we are continuing to refine the way we play mafia now, but as this moves further in a certain direction, we are creating a new line of mafias that capture what we've lost along the way. I don't see this hurting the normal mafias, and I'm not really sure a moderate mafia would match the player count of either of the split mafias. Light Mafias offer two more benefits. First, they'll prevent burnout by having more relaxed games as breaks between serious ones. Second, they're easy to get into for people who may consider trying out mafia, but are put off by a higher level of commitment and volume.
I've just realized that what mafia has lost is the essence of being a fun forum game that anyone can join. That's the kind of forum game I want to provide, just as much as I want to provide some intense games of Mafia.
-
It makes you wonder if Mafia is the correct fun forum game when it is so reliant on people attempting to play the game in a skillful manner.
-
It makes you wonder if Mafia is the correct fun forum game when it is so reliant on people attempting to play the game in a skillful manner.
Hence the necessity for Light Mafia, imo
I'd wager that Mafia is far more skilful than it is fun, normally. LM could be more fun than it is skilful, but that comes down to the players.
If it's not the correct fun forum game, then surely that's why we have a Forum Game Organizer rather than Mafia Organizer
-
The problem is, there is no mafia that works for both sides.
I just fundamentally can't understand this being the case. Both earlier mafias here and newbie games at mafiascum strike this balance. Why can't we now?
That being said, if split mafia is to happen, normal mafia should not have any restrictions on post volume, and light mafia's post count should have a soft, proportional limit - that is, if someone's post count is too high compared to everyone else, then it should be throttled. But if there's a hard limit of say 15 posts and 4-5 people are 12+, that limit is detrimental to gameplay.
If I turn out to be right and normal mafias do have a small amount of players, please post this link (https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewforum.php?f=83&sid=b4693346eeba7b4d316ed4363d26d08a) to Micro Games on mafiascum somewhere more prominent as a reference to hosts.
-
The problem is, there is no mafia that works for both sides.
I just fundamentally can't understand this being the case. Both earlier mafias here and newbie games at mafiascum strike this balance. Why can't we now?
Regarding newbie games at mafiascum, I assume that every new player contributes and there's very little flaking.
For whatever reason, that simply is untrue here. It's more untrue now, but it's never not been untrue.
-
just make sure you don't have more than two of the same style in a row, don't call them different things
Oh, and i see absolutely no reason to not give the fun set ups MoG or MoM points. seems kinda elitist to me
-
Oh, and i see absolutely no reason to not give the fun set ups MoG or MoM points. seems kinda elitist to me
Sure, but wouldn't that encourage the "pro" players to go all pro on the game and take the Light from Light Mafia?
-
Oh, and i see absolutely no reason to not give the fun set ups MoG or MoM points. seems kinda elitist to me
Sure, but wouldn't that encourage the "pro" players to go all pro on the game and take the Light from Light Mafia?
Name one person who cares about MoG/MoM points.
-
I care about them enough that it occasionally motivates me to sign up for games, but not much more than that.
-
The problem is, there is no mafia that works for both sides.
I just fundamentally can't understand this being the case. Both earlier mafias here and newbie games at mafiascum strike this balance. Why can't we now?
We were able to do this earlier because post counts were lower. In an active game now, the people who post 20 pages per Day Phase can't coexist with the people who don't want to read 20 pages per Day Phase. Looking back at previous mafias, a 15 post limit shouldn't be a problem, and may even be too high.
Oh, and i see absolutely no reason to not give the fun set ups MoG or MoM points. seems kinda elitist to me
Light Mafias will give MoM points.
-
Chat mafia is something to consider, but it's not a viable alternative to Light Mafia.
-
Barring input from players better than me, I don't have anything else to say. I'll play in a Light mafia or two just to see how it goes but I think the proposal at present is subpar for reasons I've already stated.
-
Elements Mafia has had an interesting history. When I returned in Mafia 46, we were consistently getting 20+ players per mafia, but due to its casual nature, post counts were low and individual players impacted the game with roles more than with reads. We had unbalanced setups, and even some broken ones. People still signed up, because it was fun. The waiting list for hosts was over a year long.
Ever since we were first invited to the Mafia Championships a year ago, a subset of players have been trying to emulate the play we saw there and slowly push Elements Mafia in a more discussion-heavy direction. Talk outside of the thread was banned. Roles were made more reasonable. This resulted in the highest posting games we've had on the site, but not everyone was happy with this direction. People stopped signing up for various related and unrelated reasons, but at the same time, setups were getting better. Mafia hit a slump for a while.
Then, Kuro hosted Mafia 68. With old players returning, it was the greatest game Elements Mafia had ever seen, both in gameplay and post count. Unfortunately, not everyone enjoyed the tremendous volume, and the general burnout resulted in Mafia 69 ending in less than 100 posts with half the players.
It was clear that we needed a break from mafia.
There has to be a balance. There has to be a way for people — most of them, at least — to be happy. I aim to find this balance, because it's my job to find it. Answering these polls and having discussions in the thread will help me with that. If none of the options in a poll fit your position, please explain why.
To all of the people who have lost interest in mafia, I have two more questions.
First: Why did you leave?
Second, and much more importantly: What would make you come back?
1. I sensed that many/most players here, whether stated outright or not, opposed a serious style of play which is really the only kind I intend to play with or enjoy.
2. This is the $1,000,000 question I think (in terms of processing how each respondent answers). I'll be honest -- I don't think Elements has the "serious" player base to support style of games that I enjoy and a "Light" type of game seems likely to attract way too many "I only like having some powerful role" / "I don't want to read anything" / "Quite voting me I don't like it but don't want to defend" / "I'll no post whenever I feel like it and you shouldn't be unhappy it ruins the game for everyone else" players for me to even be able to "not dislike it" let alone even hope to enjoy that Light game style.
Are we losing sight of the fact that mafia is a game of deception and detecting deception primarily and NOT "who can figure out a plan that maximizes power/roles/abilities the best to minimize how much 'true mafia game' playing is needed to win / not-lose"??
I digress but suffice to say that the optimist in me is unlikely to ever abandon trying/wanting to play or try to find motivation to play elements-mafia and the pessimist in me sees little chance a solution comes to pass near-term that leads me to believe I'll enjoy signing up and playing.
-
Based on the feedback I've received so far, the plan I'm currently considering goes like this:
Elements Mafia will be split into two types of mafia.
Normal mafias will mostly stay the same. Games will start on Day 1. Discussion will be limited to the thread. If there is a high post volume on Day 1, say 15 pages, players will not be allowed to talk during the Night for the rest of the game. Most or all players will be given a role, but nothing too crazy.
Alternating with normal mafias, we will have a new type of mafia called Light Mafia. These will be more similar to how mafia used to be played, but with more balanced setups. They will not be numbered mafias and will not count for Master of Mafia points. Discussion will be allowed outside of the thread. Each player will have a post limit of 15 posts every Day Phase, and 10 posts every Night Phase. The last 20 minutes of each Day Phase will be unrestricted. Attempting to get around the post limit by making very large posts will not be allowed. Everyone will be given a role, and expect to have more powerful and/or "fun" roles in the game.
Setups should be geared towards one of these types of mafia. There is a setup that was created a while ago by Coffee, kdz, and myself, that will act as the successor to the standard mafia setup that I tried to implement in Mafia 65. It can easily be modified to fit both types of mafia, and there are enough roles to pull from that each game will be different. The next mafia will be a Light Mafia run with this setup, and it will be used whenever there is no sufficient setup ready to be hosted.
This honestly seems like a better method than trying to please everyone with every mafia. Thoughts?
I'll provide my take on this suggested possible path forward...
a) As for my part, I'm highly highly unlikely to sign up for any Light style mafia games or role madness games. Not to say I _never_ would play them but it just doesn't have a good chance of tickling my competitive juices the way the real/actual mafia games do.
b) I would consider and read through each and every "real" game setup in a way that I could see myself joining some of those -- however my motivation would be heavily tempered by how many of the frequently-flaking and frequently-fussy players signed up for them too. That is, the small serious player base active here isn't likely to result in many setups or signup-lists that makes me want to sign up.