Feel free to do whatever. Those restrictions aren't in this game.

Roy, you evil son of a bitch, I'm glad you're not ingame to backstab me seven ways as a 'favor'=)... God, I was isolated from the town.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 22 2012, 4:12 am by Observer12425.

I think you posted this in the wrong thread. Anyway, you never asked me for anything other on suggestions on what you should do with your night power, which I thought I answered before being "dead" for the rest of that game (not that it would have mattered because the other two Architects would have prevented any night decisions you made).

And no, you can't ask me for that favor I owe you in a game I'm hosting.

Interesting.

I'm guessing Roy's clues are going to be so obscure that no one will decipher them correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more red herrings than actual clues.

Right, so instead of players losing based on anything related to them, they can lose based on misinterpreted information leaked by the host.

I doubt he's going to make red herrings, since his clues will be "nearly impossible" to decipher, and trying to get innocent players lynched (or trying to get any players lynched, for that matter) is exactly what the host should never be doing under any circumstances.

I don't think you'll see him engaging in this behavior.

Clues add depth to the game. It means there's more than one way to go towards winning, making the game more enjoyable for a wider variety of players. It's the reason why MMOs have multiple classes. Not everyone likes using a sword.

Personally, I've found Azrael's method of clues to be the most balanced implementation. Clues can be forged and be of the same style as real clues, but point to the wrong players, which leaves them open for discussion. So it is the case that clues provide evidence against a person, the same way behavioral analysis does, but doesn't exactly condemn them. But that does seem a bit complicated to Roy's game, so I think something along the lines of having clues point towards a handful of players rather than just one (like only three players were capable of writing the code), which gives a list of suspects.

Clues remove depth from the game. I replied to you via shouts, but I guess it's more appropriate to reply with a post.

Each game of Mafia is a puzzle with a time limit; you use player interactions and logic to solve it, and to increase the time you have to solve it. Having the host, who knows the answer to the puzzle, give one side hints about the answer isn't fair or in the spirit of the game.

Furthermore, even if the hints are so convoluted that they won't give any information away (which is certainly better than giving useful clues), their existence still distracts people from solving the actual puzzle, and instead has them focus on the way in which the host worded the puzzle in the hopes of cheating the parameters of the game and finding leaked private host information.

There is no reason to have clues, since it only serves to undermine the integrity of the puzzle and detract from the fairness of its resolution.

While I trust Roy can provide clues without outing any of the Mafia, which makes the game playable at least, I feel the inclusion of public clues is still detrimental to the game experience; if players were looking as hard at each other as they do at the host's posts, they'd have no problem finding all the clues they need to win (which is the object of the game in the first place).


Even though I put so many layers of convolution between clues and players in my game (made clues private, made them nearly impossible to solve, made them easily faked and thus unverifiable), I may still rework Researcher in my next Mafia game to try to eliminate the clue process altogether. I'd rather it give some other information, which perhaps pieces together a puzzle itself (like how my version of Detective gave limited information, and enough Detective results put together will help solve who is guilty if applied correctly).

That version of Detective clearly added strategic depth to the game, especially when compared to the original, and has therefore been used in every Mafia game since then (including this one). I'd like to think there is some equivalent mechanic to replace clues, which could be universally accepted as being superior. I was hoping that as a short-term step toward fairness, the inclusion of a Researcher role for clue-generating would catch on, so at least clues would no longer be public (and with Falsify Documents, making it completely unverifiable that the clues presented are valid or even exist).

At the end of the day, Mafia is a game which requires a neutral host to function. The Mafia and Town can't know the actions of the other side, nor can they distribute themselves roles, so you need a third-party to receive those actions and give the result. When that third-party, who necessarily knows all the roles and night actions, starts handing out that information publicly and freely of their own accord, it is by definition unfair. The only way to possibly make it not "definitely unfair" is to convolute it to the point of being undecipherable (as is being done in this game), which makes that characteristic a necessity for a game with clues to even be considered a playable game at all, even if it is contradicting one of the most fundamental aspects of Mafia.

As the "next step" towards reaching a fair compromise between those who like it when the host leaks information, and those who like playing Mafia, I'd ask for the following:

1) Clues be convoluted to the point of being undecipherable.
2) Clues never be posted publicly by the host.
3) All players know the format which clues are presented in.

These three steps would go a long way by themselves. Two more step which would also help is:

4) All players who receive clues can voluntarily receive a fake clue targeting a specific person.
5) All players who receive clues must submit a night action to do so.

The former ensuring that no clues can ever be taken completely at face value (since admittedly some players are not capable of faking their own clues), and the latter ensures a player must be active to have the benefit of generating clues (rather than going AFK for a week and then being just as useful as if he had been active, simply by posting everything he's received so far).

If you want a fair and balanced setup, the obvious choice is to not have clues. However, if you're really intent on adding clues, then for the sake of preserving the quality and integrity of your game, I'd recommend working these five requirements for clues into your game's design.

Perhaps over time an even better implementation can be found, and I'd be more than willing to hear from anyone else who has a similar level of knowledge and experience concerning multiplayer game design. As of now, this would be the best "next step" towards an implementation of clues that is both fair and has as little negative impact on the gameplay as possible.

Without clues there will be too much empty talk with some people creating drama over lunching a mafia, others creating drama over lynching a townie and others staying out of it. In such an environment, what behavioral analysis can you speak of if players are voting essentially at random? It is a mess because we are playing over the internet and not face-to-face. So without a huge stream of information such as body language, tone of the voice, etc that we have in real-life communication you get a post someone may have spent 10 minutes thinking through. I don't want to participate in chaos, I want to participate in a game. Clues are meant to replace the real-life subtleties to create room for structure.

If we don't get clues, count me out.

No one is voting at random. If you don't understand how to tell who is Mafia without the host telling you, then you are by definition bad at Mafia, because that is the only objective in this game. I would suggest you actually play some Mafia games legitimately (like on any other site that hosts Mafia) to learn how to pick up on scumtells. Alternatively, maybe you would start understanding how this game is played if you reviewed some of the games on SEN where I single-handedly named all of the Mafia, without any clues or other unfair help from the host.

When you start making fallacious claims like "theres no way to tell who is mafia unless the host tells you," it becomes pretty obvious you have no experience with Mafia games, online or otherwise. Townies trying to figure out who is Mafia, and Mafia trying to act like Townies, is the singular point of the game. That is the entire game at its most fundamental level. This basic concept is really not that complicated.

Did you even read all of JaFF's post?

Yes, did you read mine? My post is in direct response to his.

His post can be summarized as "You can't tell who is Mafia online, so host needs to tell us instead."

Which is objectively untrue, and I provided numerous examples to show as much.

Not to mention, it's completely contrary to the point of the game, which he'd know if he was an experienced Mafia player.

I did read your response, and I also read his post. It's just odd that you tell someone who explains the fundamentals of in-person Mafia to go play Mafia because he doesn't understand how real Mafia works. He does make valid points in my opinion. There are things you just can't judge based on simple online interaction. If we played a game with someone new (as in someone we haven't played with before or know his personality) who just participated in voting and said nothing else the entire time, you'd have nothing to base a lynch on other than "Oh, that guy is just too quiet and that's suspicious". And that's only if you even notice the guy never says anything, as tons of people have gotten away with playing like that in the past and succeeding. Most of my behavioral analysis done in the past was based on comparing how players act in a current game to how they played in prior games or by paying attention to voting patterns, as that seemed to be immensely effective. I admit I haven't played online Mafia outside of SEN, but I imagine if you play with a massive group of random people, you can't at all rely on something like that, right?

EDIT:
(To clarify: that last question was meant as a serious question, not as some sort of "Gotcha!" jab or anything)

If we're going to lose players over this I'd rather keep the clues in and leave the analysis to people who feel firmer about the value of clues (and therefore should in theory be able to translate them better). Not like changing my vote will chance much, as the "leave clues in" option is winning by a landslide.

To be fair, Az said he wouldn't play if there were clues. So either way you'd lose a player.

1) That's a terrible reason for a terrible mechanic.

2) There are two experienced Mafia players sitting out because there are clues.

It was annoying Raccoon guessed Pie and I on the first night, but no one listened to him. It didn't influence our win enough for it to bother me...the town had other problems going on too.

I'll play if there are clues.
And it'd be nice if they weren't very sparse or ridiculously hidden else the less experienced clue finders won't have anything to do. (Just like the less experienced behavioral analysts have nothing to do in clueless games and become sheep.) I'd appreciate if we went back to the times Mafia was officially hosted by SEN staff when there were always a lot of clues hidden among a lot of flavor text while the clues themselves were interpretable in many ways so discussion and deception was about the clues. The better players added their behavioral analyses into the mix which created a pretty rich experience of mafia imo. Everyone could contribute.
Most of the reason I lost interest in Mafia is the degradation of clue quality (in the above sense) or the lack thereof. I trust Roy to have the writing skills and the endurance to host with the burden of high quality night posts. That's why I'm giving it a shot again.

I won't have enough time to forge alliances or put too much time into clue interpretation but I'll help where I can. That said it'd be appreciated if one of the more experienced players contacted me once the game has begun.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 22 2012, 8:08 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: added argument / improved language

NudeRaider, this game it would help if you actually read the rules and PMed your actions to the host instead of posting them publicly.

This game I signed up so of course I'll do that.