(Sign up) Priority

[Mekkah**]

Those definitions are neither accurate nor necessary. The game types are actually defined quite clearly in the sticky topic.

[Blue_Tornado]

why are you giving each of those it's own style of play? beginners should have all kinds of games for beginners to actually learn from them.

[polelover44]

One of the reasons, I feel, that Standard games have dropped in quality is because of the lack of Beginner games available. With few or no Beginner games (there have been a total of four since the system was implemented), more and more players who are either new to mafia or do not belong in Standard games have been playing standard - and they've been getting in because they're P1. If we mandate a minimum number of Beginner games (i.e. for every x Standard games going on, there must be at least y Beginner games; or there must be x Beginner games at all times), we can regulate the people who do not belong in Standard for whatever reason down to Beginner, and improve the overall quality of Standard games. With improved Standard game quality, some people may come down from Expert games to play in Standard, increasing Standard game quality even more.

[dak]

thing is, a fella doesn't wanna host a beginner, so this ain't never happening pal

[smashlloyd20]

Not really, perhaps some new people that played a few standard/beginner games might want to. I'd be willing to, but I don't know enough about mafia and I have other things going on.

P.S. jigglypuffers, why oh why did you make me village leader...in my first mafia game!?

[Da Letter El]

I was village leader in my first mafia game :x

On-topic: I don't really know how much easier the priority system can be to understand. Perhaps putting it at or near the top of the rules would be nice, since more people are going to care about playing than hosting, but I see this as far from an issue.

On a related tangent which everyone seems to be going on about: Game quality tends to be down in Standard games versus Expert ones, sure. Whether it's conceptually or in terms of the player-base, the tag "Expert" serves as something that basically begs me to join, while "Standard" has me join if I'm bored or something. From my perspective, the reasons Standard games aren't as popular with some of the more experienced players are varied. For some, seeing a host who they haven't played against to have an idea of their relative skill makes them less inclined to join a game.

Besides that, all my thoughts have already been expressed.

[vonFiedler]

smashlloyd, why oh why did you lose when I gave the game to you

[auramaster]

Messing up priority is very minor, and doesn't affect the game at all. If it really annoys you, just mention priority in the game rules, or somewhere else in the signup post. Offtopic...

Originally Posted by Fat Iambasto

thing is, a fella doesn't wanna host a beginner, so this ain't never happening pal

This can't be emphasized enough. Only 4 Beginner games, and there have been 2 long periods with no games ready to start. For a type of game that is pretty easy to design, with no experimental concepts or anything complicated, there should be plenty of games waiting to start at all times. Standard players could make a game to try out hosting. Experts could throw a game together real quick for Beginners to play with minimal effort. I know not everyone enjoys hosting, or has the time to host a game, but the fact that almost no one is hosting Beginner games is just ridiculous.

[smashlloyd20]

Agreed.

@Von: First mafia game. Come on. Besides, after I died it was all Ana.

[jigglypuffers42]

I wasn't saying they were accurate to what they are, but what they should be.

Some expert games could use going down to standard to raise the tier, and many standard games could use going down to beginer. I was stating my personal opinion on how the layout should be.

@B_T: I'm not really categorizing them. Beginner is for beginner set ups, Expert is for really good overlying concepts, and Standard should be everything in between. If we make it this way it will raise the tier into something actually worth playing.

EDIT: Yes, please. Mods have been a part of these conversations, but we need you to lay a verdict; say something that tells us you have a plan and/or think things are fine.

[Engineer Pikachu]

Originally Posted by Fat lambasto

thing is, a fella doesn't wanna host a beginner, so this ain't never happening pal

This. I think it's that psychology that hosting a Beginner game somehow makes you inferior to a Standard host; if it's not, then it's just simply because everyone wants to try something new, whether or not they are host or player.

Something some other people have said already is that the quality of Standard games might have dropped due to the lack of Beginner games. I only played in one mafia (Unicycle) before joining Monsters; I don't think I did too horribly, but I would've definitely joined a Beginner game instead of Monsters had the option been open at that time.

Originally Posted by Fat jigglypuffers42

I wasn't saying they were accurate to what they are, but what they should be.

Some expert games could use going down to standard to raise the tier, and many standard games could use going down to beginer. I was stating my personal opinion on how the layout should be.

Aren't 2-village v 1-mafia games really bad in terms of how it plays out?

[polelover44]

really it would be best if we got rid of 2v1 altogether, bumping it down to Beginner won't make it any "better".

[Engineer Pikachu]

I just realized that I had said 2v1s, lumping 2Mafia1Village with 2Village1Mafia. I personally hate 2Village1Mafia, but I think that 2Mafia1Village has its merits.

To come back to the topic, I think that sign-up priority isn't really a big issue. The example given was a new player that called themselves P3 when they could be P1. There's no issue there; the problem is, what happens when a P2 player (still new) signs up for a game as P1? Personally, I wouldn't manually recheck the priority of every single person who signed up, so I have to rely on the hopes that everybody knows what their priority is. The easy solution that comes to mind is to have a big bold notice in the sign-up thread that your priority is the number of games you are currently in plus one, keeping in mind that being dead still counts with the exception of Night 0. It could go something like this:
ATTENTION. Your priority is equal to the number of games you are in plus one. Unless you were killed N0, a currently running game that you were killed in still counts as a game.
Thoughts?

@polelover: But it still might be good for others to know; if everyone knew what priority was, then there wouldn't be a thread titled "What is Priority?"

[polelover44]

well yeah, that's what priority is.

[Blue_Tornado]

2v1 isn't that terribly bad, it's just got this bad image now

one of those once in a while isn't going to kill anyone

[polelover44]

2v1 isn't inherently bad, no, but Smogon's fallen into this "hooker leads village" routine that takes the fun out of the game.

[Raikage]

I got a new reason why no one wants to host a beginner - not enough people want to play them.

[Quagsires]

Originally Posted by Fat Raikage

I got a new reason why no one wants to host a beginner - not enough people want to play them.

I changed my priority so it can start, but I see your point. There's just not that many new people who want to join mafia atm, and even then, I'm not exactly a beginner. Sure it helps when we do get enough people for multiple beginners as its been proposed in the past, but we barely have enough for a game as it is.

And this isn't the first beginner like this either. Randomness, the beginner before yours, had about all but 2 people get in it (25/27 get in), so this is not a new problem by any means. They've just been declining until now, where you already have a player's list by just removing priorities.

[Engineer Pikachu]

Originally Posted by Fat Raikage

I got a new reason why no one wants to host a beginner - not enough people want to play them.

While it is true that the "playerbase" for Beginner Mafias are generally smaller than Standard (Standard = Beginner + Non-Beginner, therefore Standard > Beginner), I think the main culprit in this case (Mythology) is that there are way too many sign-ups going at once. There was this one, then SANDS went up shortly afterwards, then Jiggs decided to post sign-ups for Metroid; many people who would've joined Mythology probably decided to join at least one of the other two; this may be due to the psychology that Standard makes you better than Beginner. I'm not sure if Randomness sign-ups were during a sign-up frenzy, though.

This brings me to a central point that I've been seeing a lot in Circus. Why is it that Mafia games start and finish in waves? It makes no sense (theoretically you should have a constant stream of games), less people will sign-up for each one (or lower priority), and people who miss sign-ups have to wait ages (about a month) for the next game sign-up to start. Since we can have 3 Standards and 1 each of Beginner and Expert, wouldn't it make much more sense to have a game start and end every week, instead of four games starting every month? True, not every game has deadlines of 48 hours and lasts for exactly seven day/night cycles, but you can keep a rough weekly (or biweekly) "schedule" of sorts.

[jigglypuffers42]

Originally Posted by Fat Engineer Pikachu

While it is true that the "playerbase" for Beginner Mafias are generally smaller than Standard (Standard = Beginner + Non-Beginner, therefore Standard > Beginner), I think the main culprit in this case (Mythology) is that there are way too many sign-ups going at once. There was this one, then SANDS went up shortly afterwards, then Jiggs decided to post sign-ups for Metroid; many people who would've joined Mythology probably decided to join at least one of the other two; this may be due to the psychology that Standard makes you better than Beginner. I'm not sure if Randomness sign-ups were during a sign-up frenzy, though.

This brings me to a central point that I've been seeing a lot in Circus. Why is it that Mafia games start and finish in waves? It makes no sense (theoretically you should have a constant stream of games), less people will sign-up for each one (or lower priority), and people who miss sign-ups have to wait ages (about a month) for the next game sign-up to start. Since we can have 3 Standards and 1 each of Beginner and Expert, wouldn't it make much more sense to have a game start and end every week, instead of four games starting every month? True, not every game has deadlines of 48 hours and lasts for exactly seven day/night cycles, but you can keep a rough weekly (or biweekly) "schedule" of sorts.

This sounds good in theory, but not so great in practice. Mafia games can take a variable amount of time, as FF3 took like a month and a half, you wouldn't be able to make sure that they all end at the right time.

Another part of this is that SANDS sign ups started, and everyone in survivor thought that game was hopeless so they asked zorbees to cancel the game so their priority would go back up. This left an extra spot for my game, and I wanted to get it up soon which in retrospect might not have been the best idea, adding to the amount of games up there.

Also, normally (or hopefully) a new player lurks around and watches games until a beginner game opens up and then they play that and then they move on the standard. Most of the time, they can wait until the beginner game begins to start mafia. However, having no beginner games for a long time caused the beginners to (even more than usual) just skip to standard, leaving less beginers for the next beginner game.

[vonFiedler]

Seriously guys, it's the week before Christmas. It wasn't best time to have any sign-ups, let alone all three at once.

[UncleSam]

I think the problem is a combination of Christmas, big mafia AND expert mafia at the same time, and, as I have been saying for a while, the general decline of standard, which beginner is following. Big/Expert mafia mean that most good players don't touch standard anymore, resulting in more beginners playing in standard and, by the trickle down effect, fewer players signing up for beginner at all.

[Yeti]

Originally Posted by Fat Engineer Pikachu

There was this one, then SANDS went up shortly afterwards, then Jiggs decided to post sign-ups for Metroid; many people who would've joined Mythology probably decided to join at least one of the other two;

Surprisingly enough, the SANDS signups consisted of almost exclusively people I knew had played mafia before. I guess beginners and people with like 1 postcount got the memo they should be going to Beginner. I'm glad, because SANDS is definitely not for people with no clue how to play.

Originally Posted by Fat jigglypuffers42

This sounds good in theory, but not so great in practice. Mafia games can take a variable amount of time, as FF3 took like a month and a half, you wouldn't be able to make sure that they all end at the right time.

That one mafia with Spiderman and the factions took like 2+ months if memory serves, the name escapes me. Venom and crap and the Sinister Six. Meanwhile, the first Overkill ended on N2, admittedly it was like the third N2 in a row due to crap items, and thus was over very quickly. Mafia games run at different paces, and when you factor in those that get canceled/abandoned due to no PMs, you can't really keep a schedule unless you set aside a week between when one game ends for another to start.

Originally Posted by Fat jigglypuffers42

Another part of this is that SANDS sign ups started, and everyone in survivor thought that game was hopeless so they asked zorbees to cancel the game so their priority would go back up. This left an extra spot for my game, and I wanted to get it up soon which in retrospect might not have been the best idea, adding to the amount of games up there.

Yeah, in my opinion, it's not the best idea to start two Standard signups at once. I was anticipating starting after Survivor was officially canceled, as opposed to Ancient ending due to 20% kills. Survivor's updates were far and few between, and small, anonymous mafias have been consistently unsuccessful in my experience.
There should be some regulation that if two games either end around the same time or one gets canceled, one Standard signup goes up, and once that closes the next goes up. People can tell what is coming next from the Game Listing thread, which is updated fairly regularly, and ask hosts what the game will feature to choose.
Three signups at once is like ..x.x especially drawing from the same priority base.

Originally Posted by Fat UncleSam

I think the problem is a combination of Christmas, big mafia AND expert mafia at the same time, and, as I have been saying for a while, the general decline of standard, which beginner is following.

If your statements are true, Big and Expert wouldn't affect Standard much despite being active, because the people who would either get in or play in them wouldn't join Standard games regardless of if they had a Big or Expert to play in.
I agree a fair chunk of Expert players decline to join Standard games, but there are also a fair few who play Standard.
Not to mention Dog Eat Dog was starting to wind down when all the signups began and Big is in full swing.

At first I wasn't sure having Beginner share the same priority as Standard was the best idea, but considering it, that means anyone in Beginner would be P2 for Standard, giving players who will play better a stronger shot at getting in.
It does make things problematic when there's 2+ signups going on drawing from that priority pool and people are frantically changing priorities.

Also does 2v1 ever successfully work out without everyone screaming THIS GAME IS BROKEN THIS FACTION SUCKS WHY DID YOU PUT THIS CRAP IN THE GAME WORST HOST EVER OMFG HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO WIN?
Does 1v1 ever work out without that either??
I mean people cry "broken" in 1v2 and 1v1v1 and 5-faction, etc., but it seems like 2v1 and 1v1 are plagued by more design flaws, and more lethal ones, than other formats. Consider the first lynch scenario, giving one village/faction the upper hand based on how the neutrals vote.
Hence why SANDS broaches some new formats (cannot describe), to test if they're plausible. Depending on how the game plays out I have some ideas on how to improve upon it as it is.

tl;dr we need to restrict Standard signups to one at a time so people just sign up for one game, don't get in, sign up for the next.
also kick 1v1 to the curb, in MMBN and WWE or whatever, both times the main factions lost, once to the wolves because one faction decided to ignore the opening post stating "these neutrals are bad news", and once to some jacked up third recruiting faction.

[dak]

remove the priority requirement altoghter for beginner mafia and let the host handpick people he has never heard of before, basically the opposite of expert.

that would make a lot more sense and people would actually join them more because they wouldnt be a "hindrance".

[vonFiedler]

That is the best idea regarding beginner mafia I've heard yet. It really should be at least tried.