Mafia Playstyles Discussion

[Sierra]

Scum play dirty.  Their goal is to find your weaknesses and prey on them.  Telling them not to is not gonna work - the game breaks down if they don't.   This is the real reason why you've got to have some thick skin as a townie, to be able to close off these routes of attack for scum.

This is fundamentally why I have issues with your approach to playing town, Alex--it arouses my suspicion time and again precisely because I find that intentionally knocking people off balance is a better strategy for a scum player than a townie. I fully agree with Excal's most recent post in this regard. It just seems terribly counterproductive from a town persepctive.

[Ranmilia]

While I see how it may look that way, it's really two different things.  Scum knocking townies off balance usually has little to do with aggression and more with subtle manipulation.  It's all about how townies open themselves up, whatever that may be.  For example, insisting on civility and auto-lynching aggression is itself extremely exploitable. 

Town looking to knock scum off balance, on the other hand, requires a more bruteforce approach.  The assumptions I'm making from the town side are that townies will be able to adequately defend their own actions and views, while scum cannot.  This includes assuming that everyone acts rationally and considers the present and future effects of their actions, and also that everyone can remain rational under normal circumstances and harsh questioning, so their reactions to my proddings are based on whether they actually have a defense or not - they'll only break down if they really have no answer, aka they're scum.  I'm not targeting specific weaknesses or looking for any particular holes beyond rationality.  As long as all of these are true then town aggression seems to me to be a very good tactic.

So I suppose the issue here is that these assumptions aren't holding up, which... I'll admit to somewhat being true.  It is hard for me personally to accept, though, because I simply have trouble comprehending it.  Staying mostly rational in a heated debate is something I have no trouble doing, and I just flat can't understand why other people do.  It's something I'll keep in mind. 

[Kilgamayan]

Staying mostly rational in a heated debate is something I have no trouble doing, and I just flat can't understand why other people do.  It's something I'll keep in mind.

Wait.

So you're saying it has never occurred to you that other people might get emotionally invested in a game?

o_O

[Excal]

That's not quite the point, Kilga.  I've certainly seen Alex emotionally affected by the game, just by entirely different things than that which effects other people.  I think what he's aiming at is that, he's playing from a perspective where everyone knows that what is being said is simply a false persona meant to try and encourage the victory of their side.  And that smart and unscrupulous scum will exploit you if you do not present a false face to the world like Alex does from time to time.  Hell, Otter plays by the same rules, and I don't think I'd call him emotionally uninvolved either, if you look at how he played his last game.  Hell, he basically spelled out the same principle that Alex did in his last post as he explained was it was impossible for me to be town.  That anyone playing the game well would not make certain mistakes and would keep certain things in mind.  So, it's not so much the emotional involvement that he's decrying, it's the lack of thinking out every step before it's taken, and the continual acceptance of what's said at face value, without continually assuming that someone might just simply be lying.

As for Alex's last post.  I think you've just hit on the crux of the issue.  You, and Otter, both seem to assume that not only are we all capable of that sort of detachment, but that it is a requirement of playing Mafia.  And that if somebody decides that they are incapable of that, do not want to be capable of that, or think differently from yourself, then they are not worthy of playing the game.

Perhaps you're right.  Perhaps we'll never make it to the Mafia Big Leagues.  Well, that's what the beer leagues are for.  The folks who find the activity fun, but don't want to play like they do at the top tier, or are simply not cut out for it.  And, this leads to the people who don't want to face your assault, because they cannot remain cool under fire like you can.  They aren't as able to simply switch on and off how they view other people, or how they present themselves.  And this is why there's the issue.

[Yakumo]

Town looking to knock scum off balance, on the other hand, requires a more bruteforce approach.  The assumptions I'm making from the town side are that townies will be able to adequately defend their own actions and views, while scum cannot.  This includes assuming that everyone acts rationally and considers the present and future effects of their actions, and also that everyone can remain rational under normal circumstances and harsh questioning, so their reactions to my proddings are based on whether they actually have a defense or not - they'll only break down if they really have no answer, aka they're scum.  I'm not targeting specific weaknesses or looking for any particular holes beyond rationality.  As long as all of these are true then town aggression seems to me to be a very good tactic.

Maybe it's just me, but I actually find it significantly easier to defend my positions when I'm scum than when I'm town, because I know for sure whether my position is or is not correct.  Even though I'm usually pushing through attacks directed at members of the town, the fact that I'm not second guessing myself makes it easier for me to back up my claims and not get thrown off-balance by hard questions, not that I seem to get too many of those for whatever reason.  I don't know, maybe I'm alone in this, but really if I'm scum people hunting as hard as Alex usually does are going to play to my strengths, not expose me, unless I'm seriously miscalculating and picking a totally indefensible position, which I try to be even more careful not to do when I'm scum.  People are going to make mistakes, no matter which side they're on, so there's always going to be some sort of ammunition for the scum to use.

[Ranmilia]

As for Alex's last post.  I think you've just hit on the crux of the issue.  You, and Otter, both seem to assume that not only are we all capable of that sort of detachment,

Yes.  It's a game about arguing on the internet.  Of course you should take it seriously, but that doesn't mean you have to take it seriously.

but that it is a requirement of playing Mafia.

Playing it well, yes.  Like learning combos in a fighting game.

And that if somebody decides that they are incapable of that, do not want to be capable of that, or think differently from yourself, then they are not worthy of playing the game.

Not quite, and being painted in this way makes me quite upset, as it is untrue, unfair, and not terribly nice.  If you're not capable of it, that's fine, just take that into account and look for ways to compensate.  If you think differently from me and believe this is somehow not a weakness, that's fine too and I'd be fascinated to hear an explanation of why and how. 

If you decide you don't WANT to be capable of it, and instead sit back and cry foul and try to ban it.... you're totally welcome to do that, but please make it clear beforehand, since that is a different game and everyone will have to conform to that style.   

[Meeplelard]

Alex, to counter your point about it being necessary using the fighting game example...

I've seen people turned off by games immediately cause of that gap in skill is so great.  Some people bring in a game no one has played, but they have a lot of experience in, and start crushing people left and right...no one is going to have fun.  I've seen people do this.  Someone was wondering why others weren't finding his game as fun as others, when he didn't consider that maybe its cause he doesn't let others face off against weaker opponents, to there bye slowly work yourself in.

It was only once he actually gave up the controller, and let people face each other, and learn the games that people started to have actual positive opinions about the game.  Going by the philosophy "Play like a champ, people will learn from your example!" is sound in theory...but doesn't work that way in practice.  Psychologically, people don't want to play with this big wig who thinks he's amazing, and wants people to follow his example, cause he's ruining the enjoyment for others, and people would rather do things at their own pace.  It takes time to do that.  The fighting game example, the best way to learn combos requires practice over time through and through.  You fight the CPU, you face players of similar skill level to yours, you keep going on that way.  If you keep facing that Champ Player, you WILL continually get your ass kicked over and over again, and you won't accomplish anything cause you never have a chance to actually practice.  All you do is see him doing the same moves all the time, and while you may learn to defend them, he's still got the upper hand knowing exactly how to defend your moves before hand anyway, knowing the timing of both character's attacks, what have you.  You can't expect to learn a fighting game this way.  You can't expect people to be party to learning Mafia from just watching your aggressive stance.

People work their way into a game by having fun with stuff, and only once they're really into it do they start trying to play in the upper leagues.  I know I'm repeating myself, but the philosophy of Play This Way -> People Learn to play this way doesn't actually work well at all, cause of the reality of the situation.  People want to have fun, trying to enforce specific behavior on people who play the game casually and just want something fun is going to completely detract from it.  Its the difference between Casual Fighting Games and Competitive Fighting games, or Casual MtG Games and Tourney play; you go about them completely differently.  Casual is done PURELY for enjoyment; yes, you want to win ideally, but you want to have fun above all else.  Its only in true competitive play, where things matter, there's something on the line (like a reward), etc. that playing in such a serious way matters.  You can't equate Casual and Competitive play for this reason; they have COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MIND SETS.  Trying to generalize the situation into one universal circumstance does not work in reality, I'm afraid.

[Ranmilia]

Uh... actually, Meeple, that's exactly how I DO prefer to learn and play games.  And it's much easier to do in Mafia than in any given fighting game.  I'm all for having fun - but it seems like we have different opinions of what exactly constitutes fun.   

Which, IMO, demonstrates exactly why trying to use "fun" as a criteria for how you play a communal game just doesn't work. 

We're just going back and forth on this now, though, so yeah. 

[Captain K.]

*zooms in*

Town just needs to lie more.

*zooms away*

[Carthrat]

tl;dr, with a good degree of repetition, I'll bet.

<->

Firstly, we're not really talking about aggression vs. passivity anymore, are we? I'm on the side of aggression, myself, in that you have to.. well.. actively scumhunt. Whether you do that by grabbing an argument and slamming it into someone's face repeatedly, or by doing tricky mind games to see what falls out, or by being a vigilante and mainly just trying to keep a low profile so you can keep trying to kill scum at night... it doesn't really matter, the merits of any given strategy change with the games (there is a metagame, people do follow it, let's not pretend there isn't!) I don't, in fact, see much point debating the details, as they'll really just add to the ever-growing DLMafiaMetagame.

<->

There IS no 'serious business mafia' environment, and we can't really draw comparisions with it. You can't form teams, there are no prizes, etcetera. People are only playing, presumably, for the enjoyment of the game. All of us are 'playing for fun', even Otter and Alex, as difficult as it may seem to believe. Fun is our primary motivator.

Yet in this, as in any game, there is a competetive element; the desire to win, and if not win, to at least improve. This applies to casual groups of gamers as well; isn't the whole point of playing fighting games, for instance, to test your skill against other people? Isn't the enjoyment derived from the competition involved? I can't hold a desire to improve and get better as bad; the main fun is in competeing, and if play just stays at the same level and nobody really tries to improve... it just stagnates.

As for playing against people better than yourselves, two things. Firstly, Alex's link. Sirlin. It's great stuff, it says more about competetiveness than I easily can.

Secondly, mafia is actually pretty cool about this! Much better than your usual fighting game in a casual scene, because it's self-regulating! Let's say you have 10 friends of varying degrees of skill at, say, Tekken; the best ones will prefer to take on the best ones, and so on. Yet in mafia, the best player is likely to get NK'd night one, or when he does inevitably make a mistake, people will pounce on it, out of paranoid (he might be scum!) or maliciousness (he's town, but I'm scum and hate him!). Either way, whislt having varying skill levels compete against each other might well be unfun (particularly if the gap is very wide), in mafia I don't think this really applies due to the nature of the game itself.

<->

Arguments. That's what this debate seems to be over.

Iff you're going to get upset at the way someone criticizes your play in-game and take it personally, you're missing the point; they're hitting your argument, most likely. If you can't actually defeat their argument, then it is, in all likelyhood, a sign that it wasn't good enough. The thing I think people don't entirely get is that there are two parts to an argument in this game.

-The conclusion drawn from the argument, and whether it's correct or not.
-How convincing it is.

If you're a townie, you're hoping your argument is correct, and you also want it to be as convincing as possible. If you believe you're right, forwarding that argument relentlessly, defeating counterpoints, etc- this is the thing to do.It's also to your benefit to undermine the opposition.

And that's what I think people have the most trouble dealing with- because the actual moves in the game, in the form of lynches, are the key to victory. Those aggressive players want to win and thus they will, in fact, see a need to ruin the arguments of others. Perhaps even if they think those other people are town (for whatever reason), because you need to try and ensure victory, and a wrong move is a wrong move regardless of what side it comes from.

Civil debate is all well and good- but if being more aggressive can ensure that the odds of your argument being accepted go up, then it becomes a war of escalation, where the first townie to think he's right can up the ante and come out swinging. And since scum can guess at this too, then they can tune their play to the current level of debate- either to push forward a lynch or to make a particular opponent look foolish, when his aggressive argument comes out wrong.

If all you do is just take an aggressive argument badly, get upset over it, whatever- that's not actually refuting the enemy argument, which you should be able to do if you think you're right. If the game comes down to an impasse (as it almost certainly will), well, votes will ultimately decide everything.

[Kilgamayan]

And what of the 9 year-old girl? Perhaps she had no business playing in the first place. From Thomas's view, getting her off the machine allowed him to face the opponents he "should" be facing anyway.

*pause for hate-mail*

Because I'm psychic, I can tell that you violently object to the above, and that you have three specific grievances:

1) "I can't play that way, because if I did, and even if I believed it was the best path to self-improvement, I DON'T have a steady stream of opponents in the game I play. I have a limited audience and playing that way, or playing to win at all, alienates them so I am forced to tone it down."

This actually sounds an awful lot like what's going on here.

[Sierra]

Not exactly, Kilga. That's confusing better play with different types of play. That's not exactly how this discussion started and I'd rather not see it devolve into that. I would never actually suggest that someone deliberately play below their abilities, and doing so would be silly (because playing that way is not fun; this is something I won't contest). Again, this is assuming that there is, in fact, a One True Way to play Mafia, and that those who do not pursue it are deliberately playing poorly. I object to the notion that aggressive play is necessarily always good play and that anyone not pursuing it is consciously playing poorly. A large part of this--and the part that might actually convince the folks chanting "play to win" here--is that I'm highly skeptical that it actually gets results.

Take Alex, for example (yeah, I know you're all shocked). I know he's good at picking out who the scum are. The trouble is, I remain unconvinced that his method of pressuring other players has any direct connection to his ability to detect the scum players. He voiced suspicion of Ciato and Meeple in the last game, sure, and both turned out to be scum--but a more substantial amount of his posting was directed towards people who turned out to be town (Andy and I). What does pressuring someone until they crack actually accomplish? Townies can react adversely to such attention just as much as scum can (personally, I am much more likely to do so as town, since if I'm scum I know the other player actually has cause to suspect me!) If they do eventually break and come out with some kind of emotional outburst, you've only got what you expected; you can nod and go "See, look at how upset they are; they must be scum." The problem lies in the assumption that anyone reacting adversely to your continued criticism is automatically scum. All it gives you is a self-fulfilling prophecy and I do not believe it's any kind of reliable indicator as to the other player's alignment.

Aggression has its place, sure, but it's not an end in and of itself. My problem here is that people are suggesting that aggression = good play, simply because that's how they're most comfortable playing and they have trouble viewing any other method as "playing to win." Fine, they're entitled to play the game their own way, but acting surprised when someone takes continuous attacks personally is, to me, rather baffling. Yeah, it's just a game--but it's a game built around discourse and rhetoric. This makes it substantially different from fighters or chess or any of the examples used above, in which all you have to take into account is strategy. It's a social game; people will get involved emotionally, and they will have difficulty remaining objective 100% of the time. Staying calm and collected is always in a townie's best interest, yes, but I don't think you can stop this, and trying to do so is, in my opinion, expecting people to stop being human beings while they're playing the game. Kudos to you if you can do so, but most of us can't.

(Note: This doesn't mean people take in-game arguments to be genuine insults! But when you're invested in a long-running game like this, you get attached to it, you know?)

I wouldn't suggest that we give someone exhibiting emotional theatrics a free pass, no; certainly someone reacting in such a manner adds nothing of consequence to the discussion at hand. But on the same line of thought, treating it as an automatic indicator of scumminess looks horribly misguided to me.

(Of course, all of the above is arguing from a town perspective. If you're scum you also want to take the above into account--in order to exploit it).

[Carthrat]

I think people are making a somewhat flawed correlation between "Be aggressive!" and "GRAB ON AND NEVER LET GO."

If you're trying to pressure someone you should know when to stop, but I don't think the intent behind aggressive play is to just never go away; rather, it's to test someone's response and try and learn more about them, then make a decision. The challenge comes from actually making this judgement, since people do treat mafia as an emotional experience (even though they should try not to.) Nonetheless, I think some persistant questioning can indeed uncover secrets, and I can't actually think of another strong way to actively gain information for ye olde vanilla townie. A balance must be achieved.

Remember that being aggressive to get information and being aggressive to get a lynch through can be two different things- but they're gonna look the same every game and it's to your advantage as a townie to make everyone take you seriously at all times. For this reason, persistant aggression can be a stronger strategy than jumping around a lot or being rather wishy-washy.

<->

By the by, as scum, I'm actually always more uncertain about my shots at another townie; I know I'm wrong when I'm trying to drag heat onto them. Lying isn't always easy. Some directed interrogation my way could probably have done a lot of good for town in previous games.