Within a Deep Mafia Forest - Game Topic (GAME OVER)

[Yakumo]

This is reliant on the mod giving out role information, and also on the NK not being the doc and the doc correctly guessing who it is going to be on. 

True, but you have no chance of that happening at all if you tell the scum who the doc is.  I realize that the mods aren't required to do that, but it seems to be the norm rather than an exception.

This right here is pretty much the heart of the matter.  The entire concept and basis of Mafia is sifting through information and figuring things out.  If you have so little faith in your ability to separate false information from true that you'd prefer a blind shot with no information instead, first, this destroys the point of playing the game, and second, you're probably wrong and underestimating yourself.  

Alright, I don't want to be rude here, but I'd like you to step back for a second and look at the game records of you and me here.  How many scum have you figured out in your last few games, compared to me?  I think I do just fine at figuring these things out WITHOUT role information cluttering things up with falsehoods.  You(and several others) cling to your set-in-stone rote townisms and keep picking out people that don't fit your style, then when people call you out on it you get lynched nearly as often as your target.  A perfect example is Random Mafia.  I understood where you were coming from, but your reliance on your way of doing things caused you to target only townies and got you lynched.  Meanwhile, with no information aside from the way people were playing, I picked out Dhyer at the end even before Andrew came out with his doc claim to cut the field down.  In this game, I pegged Otter back on day 1, and just didn't have a way to prove it, and I had Ciato pegged as town.  I trust my ability to read playstyles more than my ability to sift information, and putting false information on the table just muddies everything up more.

Scum claims at LYLO often do give town information that they could use to make a better-informed lynch decision, and even if not, the drawback of telling the scum the remaining townie roles is almost totally inconsequential and definitely outweighed by the potential information gain.

I still don't see this one, personally.  You tell the scum everything, and most of the time get nothing but confusion in return, as far as I can see.

Yes, I do think town should have been able to figure out that Andrew and especially Otter were lying about their claims.  I don't want to write a dissertation on it, but their cases, behavior, timing and treatment of Ciato gave it away - in spades once Ciato flipped, and in hearts, diamonds and clubs when Otter claimed Gov.  Otter was on Andrew himself, then jumped to Ciato citing as reason only the way she attacked Andrew, then claimed that was enough for him to not gov-save her.  All this went down right before deadline, with Andrew purposefully holding out as long as possible and then turning for a quicklynch.

Otter had been after Ciato from day one.  I don't see any reason he SHOULD have saved her, if he had been town and telling the truth.  Also, seriously, when has a Governor ever stopped a lynch in one of our games?  It's a power nobody ever actually uses, and with very good reason.  No, I don't see why we should have lynched Otter just for his claim.

In LYLO, when no votes have been cast yet, anyone and everyone is fair game and should be looked at.  If you're a doc or other role and your behavior can back this up, claiming it up front to help clear yourself is one of the best things you can do to help town survive.  In the other direction, scum have a vested interest in never roleclaiming.  Notice, Yakko, that you were scum in many of the games where you did not claim.  Scum love to wait till the last possible second to claim and then throw a lynch on someone else.  It happened on day 2 of this game and partially happened with Otter on day 3.  Mass claim prevents scum from being able to use this psychological tactic in LYLO, whereas refusing to claim risks suspicion falling on you, THEN you claim,  then town is confused and either you look scummy and get mislynched anyhow or you have wasted town's time and effort with something you could have declared up front.  It's mostly the same principle as "roleclaim before you get lynched;"  in LYLO, everyone should be considered about to get lynched.

The fact that I was scum in some of those games doesn't change the fact that even when I was town, I still stuck to that way of thinking.  Also, if you're a doc and you've failed to protect anyone, I really don't see how your behavior can say one way or the other if you're lying or not.  I know there's rote "doc tells" that people believe in, but if a player is playing that much different than normal and hasn't been called on it by then, then the players in that game have failed.  If the player plays like that anyway, well, their behavior proves nothing.  It's still not anything you can trust.

On that note, I'm not even sure why you insist on getting a full roleclaim before every single lynch no matter what.  Or rather, why you insist on getting one and then acting on it right away.  That's just asking for a cop or doc claim if you actually have scum, like what happened here, and then you go into panic mode as you try and change your lynch and almost inevitably hit a townie instead.  Then, since the scum can 'prove' themselves as a cop since they know who's on their side(or even as a doc if they're willing to give up a NK and claim they protected a scumbuddy, though that's inherently risky), they coast through for a while unless they do other very scummy things like Andrew did in this game or the real thing speaks up and paints a target on themselves, in which case we probably end up losing the real one anyway but at least get scum in the process.  If the player is actually a doc or a cop, then you go into panic mode, probably hit another townie, maybe even another power role that doesn't get time to claim because it's close to deadline, and then the scum have their target and they die anyway.  Now, sure, letting them claim before they die is one thing, but really, if they're that close they should go anyway.  If it's a cop, you can get any information they had and then kill him and prove if you can trust it.  It sucks to lose the cop, but the town can't afford to over-rely on those roles to the point where if a scum claims it nobody will touch them like we have been lately.

[Ranmilia]

Let me lay it out another way, then.

Mass claim in LYLO hurts town IF AND ONLY IF:
- The town is able to correctly lynch on just the information they have (huge risk)
- None of the scum make roleclaims that are inconsistent with their behavior (they sometimes do)
- There are unclaimed town roles left (call it more often than not)
- The scum don't already know about those town roles (usually they do know already)
- Those town roles can still provide some substantial benefit by staying unclaimed (situational but unlikely given the above point)
- Those town roles actually DO provide their substantial benefit (ie, the doc does make a successful protect, clears an innocent, and town believes him - if they don't, no benefit.  What's the chance that they will?).

If ANY of the above statements are not true, LYLO claim is neutral or beneficial to the town - most often beneficial, if it can implicate a scum who makes a bad claim or help clear townies by revealing roles that sync up with their actions.  It is most likely that at least one of the above will not be true.  QED, LYLO claim benefits town.

The argument about false information is also pointless, because scum can opt out of it.  Scum will lie, no matter how much you want them not to.  There's nothing stopping them from putting out false roleclaims at LYLO, which are invariably going to make them look better than people who refuse to claim.  That's EXACTLY what happened this game, and there's no way to prevent that without adopting a universal attitude of "LYLO Roleclaims in general are scummy because you might be lying, " or worse, "giving out information is scummy, period."  This attitude is obviously absurd.  Relying on nothing but metagaming and gut feelings about playstyles and refusing additional information is just plain not a winning strategy.  It's not a strategy at all. 

Regarding styles, it's the same argument both sides - you're claiming my logic is bad and my style needs to change, I'm claiming your logic is bad and your style needs to change.  I can't make any claims of being a godly Mafia player, but if you want to get into that, the very first thing that happened in DL Mafia was me correctly nailing Super as scum because he went for an objectively scummy stance.  I picked out Andrew in WoT and Suikoden, the entire scum team to one degree or another in VtM, both scum in Tsukihime (by massclaim, no less, albeit with a fair amount of luck helping), had Cor pegged in WoW, named the entire scum team and the third party on day 2 of an IRC game with reasonable certainty, found QR as cop and Nitori as doc as scum in Touhou, was killed directly as scum by LYLO mass claim in Phoenix Wright...  yes, I do think my methods work.  They're not infallible, sometimes things turn out poorly, but neither is anyone and Random's the only game I can think of where I really regret how I played.  And even then that game was skewed by modkills and surrenders and town still managed to win. 

In this game, on the other hand, scum played horribly by their own admission and the agreement of observers, yet they still scored the first flawless victory since the newbie games... and town's saying "We did the right things?"  Nnnnno.  Please think carefully, learn, and enjoy future games.

[Excal]

I think part of the problem here is that a good deal of the tells that the experienced players use are ones which are, objectively, better once everyone knows the game.  Tricks and tells that were developed as the metagame was refined and which don't work when paired up with a mass of people who are beginners.  ie. The best Mafia player in the world doesn't fear the second best, he fears Dread Thomas.

As for the claiming in LYLO, I think I see your points Alex, and do agree that the listed benefits manage to outweigh the drawbacks.  Specifically, the pinning down of claims early on so that the scum cannot back track later.

[Ranmilia]

I think part of the problem here is that a good deal of the tells that the experienced players use are ones which are, objectively, better once everyone knows the game.  Tricks and tells that were developed as the metagame was refined and which don't work when paired up with a mass of people who are beginners.  ie. The best Mafia player in the world doesn't fear the second best, he fears Dread Thomas.

Quoted for truth, and it should be noted that experienced players lowering their games to compensate does not work in the long run.  Some short term cred is fine, maybe don't lynch Smodge every time, but reversing positions on major gameplay issues is not going to work because as those same beginners gain skill these reversals and allowances are the exact first things they'll exploit as scum.

[Yakumo]

I'm not trying to say you need to totally switch your style to conform with ours.  I'm saying that there's things here that play out differently that seem to me to be totally subjective, and that you treat as hard and fast rules.  And frankly, if that's what Mafia eventually devolves to when players gain experience, I don't want to be playing that game.  It'll turn into people sitting in rigid boxes that they won't break for fear of being called out as scum and the game turns into a boring clinical discussion.  Is that really what you're saying Mafia is supposed to be?  I actually enjoy the game the way I play it, where I rely on knowledge of the players instead of the rules of what is absolutely town behavior and what is absolutely scum.  If you're saying you expect us to turn into that here, well, I think I'm going to bow out.

[Ranmilia]

Of course not, but you can't go whole hog either way.  We're at sort of a disadvantage here by having such an insular group that metagaming is even able to come to the fore at all.  If you base your play entirely on that, what are you going to do when you hop into a game with people you don't know at all, or vice versa?  (This discussion is definitely making me want to try out an anonymous game here with everyone taking up a secret new account to post under.)  What are you going to do when the other people here who know that's how you make your judgments deliberately maintain or alter their playstyle to throw you for a loop? 

Metagaming can be useful in VERY limited doses, but I'd never consider it anywhere near reliable.  Objective play is objective for a reason - it's usually right and can be used totally independently of personal styles.  It doesn't make the game totally cut and dried by any means, but it shifts the game into being a hunt for clues and struggle to avoid dropping them, which I do much prefer to a personal behavior-guessing gamble. 

[Yakumo]

Whereas when the game is playing like that, that's the part of the game where I get bored and I really don't have much to say.  When the game is playing totally objectively, it seems less like a game to me and more like work, and then it isn't fun.