Mafia in 2012

Layell

Alas poor Yorick!
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Making a new thread here mostly to garner attention, it’s the end of the year and a few things need to be discussed. First on the table is the Smog Awards and have our own little discussion about those. I’m still looking back on all the games but by far the most interesting of the games to watch was Metroid Prime 2 Mafia and it did some things I did not expect out of a game. For games I played Underground was great but really slanted towards the human players, where I got great abilities some of my fellow teammates got nearly useless ones. Persona Mafia, another Acklow game was also great and I honestly think this design could be more or less copied completely so long as the chain-killing system was removed and you needed to find and kill those who needed you dead as well. I’m not going to try to say anyone who is the best mafia player so far as I intend to read through all the games again.

Looking back we all must agree smogon mafia is dying once again. We have had some great moments and interesting games. But for every one of that there is some horrible imbalance or unmotivated players. In our last game I and a good number of other players had been outright idling and not giving and care about it. Subs were nonexistent so we just got the hosts begging for subs in every post they make. We only had one beginner game, Futarama Mafia, and what the hell is someone like Walrein doing in a game for beginners? In terms of activity we are becoming really closed nit as a community, maybe more beginner games would be nice for actual new people. Clearly we aren’t the same as CAP which is also trying to recruit new blood but following some of their discussion would be nice. If we could connect with others who may be interested in playing mafia, and if we take a risk and let them play and make their own mistakes we might find ourselves with new users and surprise more people.

I suggested earlier in the month on #ffm that this lull in games was good for us as a whole because we are probably burned out of mafia. I’d rather only play one or two interesting bigs/experts than having played 8 and half were really bad.

I’ve rambled on a bit, and I’ll probably ramble on in this thread more, but what are your thoughts?
 
I suggested earlier in the month on #ffm that this lull in games was good for us as a whole because we are probably burned out of mafia. I’d rather only play one or two interesting bigs/experts than having played 8 and half were really bad.
Yep. If we want some sort of continuation here, though, new players are definitely the key to that. Let's face it - even if games become more scarce, the hype isn't going to show up just like that.
 

UncleSam

Leading this village
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Can we go back to one big mafia every couple months without nearly as many experimental concepts?

Because honestly I think mafia would be more fun for everyone (including those with a ton of experience) if it was low-key and not that big of a deal. The motivated userbase is small because the games look too daunting to bother learning how to play.

Just my take.
 

Ampharos

tag walls, punch fascists
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
I actually woke up this morning intending to make a thread like this ._.

If we're going to fix the problems associated with smogon mafia, we need to look at each problem individually and identify solutions for each of them. These are some of the major issues I'm seeing:

1. Dwindling playerbase

This has been going on for quite a long time now. Old players such as Mekkah and Jumpluff are retiring, but there are no new players coming in to replace them, as seen by my forced participation in a beginner game a while back. You can't have mafia games, especially experts and bigs, without having people who are willing to play them.

There are a couple of fixes to this. A while back, Mekkah wrote a series of smog articles detailing the basics of mafia and how one could get into the game, and I ate that shit up. In fact, that's what introduced me to mafia in the first place. If someone or someones were to resume mafia smog articles, that might help out our dwindling playerbase.

Of course, we could also simply reduce game size. If you don't have enough players for your game, why not just make the game smaller? Not only would this accommodate our smaller playerbase, but it might also help with idling problems too. Which leads me to my second point...

2. Idling (BAN ME PLEASE)s

This has been a problem for years, but I still feel like it should be addressed because it's getting worse, not better. I don't understand why people sign up for games if they don't intend on playing the game, but I'm guilty of this too (see: most games I joined after discovering League of Legends) and we need a way to stop it.

A while back there was a thread on possible punishments for idlers, and while some good ideas were tossed around nothing was actually implemented. I think we need to return to that thread and seriously consider what we can do to stop the chronic idling problem in Smogon Mafia. With that being said, I have a few suggestions as well:
-Make IRC Mandatory: Most games are doing this already, but the few that aren't seriously need to. Mandatory IRC makes it easier on everyone - players can send actions and discuss with teammates, hosts can yell at people who haven't sent actions, everyone wins. The only complaint about this I've heard is "I DON'T HAVE IRC YOU (BAN ME PLEASE)." To those of you saying that, allow me to point you in this direction.
-Smaller game size: Again, this solves a lot of problems. If games are smaller, the ones that get in are the ones that are more likely to care. It also makes games shorter, meaning that games are less likely to get stale and lose players' interest. For NOC, change the title of this section to "A hell of a lot smaller game size" - in my opinion, NOCs need not be bigger than 15 players.
-Three strikes, you're out: After three games containing multiple instances of a certain player idling, just blacklist him. Weed out the RODANs (sorry RODAN :[), if you will.
Obviously not all of these solutions are great ones, or even good ones, but they're better than idling assholes ruining games.

3. MULTIFACTION IS STALE AS FUCK STOP MAKING THEM

Multifaction was never even that good to begin with. Sure, it was kinda fun, but they're hard as shit to balance, they go on forever and make people lose interest, they encourage assholery, and the shit they try is TOO experimental - it doesn't work and it doesn't feel like mafia anymore either. You wanna know why 2v1 was the accepted formula for ages? It's because it works, and its fun, even despite the village leader controlling a lot. We need to return to mafia's roots of a slightly simpler game.


I had more but then I had to do stuff and I forgot it, if I remember I'll post again.
 

Layell

Alas poor Yorick!
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I agree with Walrein in that multifaction is probably the worst game mode at the moment, and if I ever find myself in "three more or less equal teams and maybe a wolf lol" I am immediately requesting a sub. This game mode has done as much as it can do and I cannot imagine anything new being introduced to multifaction that hasn't already been done.

In terms of idling there also needs some action on the hosts to ensure that every player has a reason to play. If someone is the backup doctor that isn't exactly something that is going to get them committed right away. When individual win conditions for members within an alliance are put into play then things can get interesting in my experience.

To change the mood slightly I'd love to know some players favourite experiences from this year, as some experiences are rarely shared. Red panda was fun even though a missed out on the 'create a multifaction team', while that alliance rush was incredibly crazy and with how pr007 tried to sabotage everything. I finally got the posts undeleted from the thread, people should go look back on that. I also had a great time in Underground Mafia as a game which had a lot of interesting pins, which sadly weren't all used to their full potential.
 

zorbees

Chwa for no reason!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I think experimental games are too much fun for the experienced player base to simply drop them altogether; the problem is, basically everything we've seen recently has been experimental. Maybe make it so only 1 or 2 out of 3 Standard-level games going on can be experimental? Thoughts? Don't think this would be an immediate solution but it'd theoretically help get more basic games going which I think is one of the main issues.

We definitely need some more basic games. I think a lot of the problem with the player base was that the beginner games and standard/expert games were so drastically different that a lot of the beginners couldn't make the transition. Basically every beginner game was 2v1 with standard roles, while basically every standard or expert had experimental concepts and/or roles to deal with. Basically, the beginner games were preparing people for basic games, but then there weren't any basic games being made.

Another problem is a lot of the hosts from the past are gone, and not too many are stepping up to fill the void. I am pretty guilty of this; I end up working on a bunch of games and never finishing them. Still though, I think if you increase the player base, you will ideally find more people willing to host.

I think the ideal type of game to make is a fairly basic mafia rule/structure-wise but with some roles (or items) that are a bit more experimental. I don't think this would be too intimidating, particularly since they'd be secret, but they'd keep the games from being too boring and formulaic, which I believe was the cause of more games becoming experimental.

On a personal note: I have a couple games nearly ready for approval, but I am putting them on hold because winter is typically a bad time for me. I travel a lot between Florida and Maryland and I don't have that great internet when I'm in Florida. Most of my games are experimental in nature though, so it wouldn't really address the problem of the stale community. Additionally, I am pretty prone to making mistakes (made them in YugiMafia and an rtm I hosted a while back, which is my only hosting experience bar the cancelled Survivor Mafia), so I usually need a cohost, which would take away a potential player. If anyone is willing, I'd give them a sheet of one of my games and let them run it as the main host, while I co-host as best as I can given my travel and internet issues. If anyone is interested, PM me either on IRC or on the forums.
 
i have a mafia-esque game planned similar to bass' cereal murder, it should be fresh and interesting, while it's not traditional mafia, i think what we should acknowledge is that 'smogon mafia' is not the only kind of mafia that we play. smogon mafia is more of an information gathering/processing game rather than testing our abilities to weed out scum, etc.

i hope my game will bring out some qualities in mafia players that i think should be encouraged
 
To be honest, I don't think imposing further restrictions on what games can be run when we have none to run at all will help the situation. People do need to go back to basics, though, as we've agreed so many times.

The flagging playerbase is a huge problem, and passively waiting for people to come to us won't help. Either we accept mafia is just kinda dead or we try to get new players to join, make beginner games, and actively teach and play with them... it's an attitude change. Means getting them in our IRC channels and teaching them instead of just giving them orders. Our games are too daunting and too complex now. Honestly, I think they are too daunting and complex for us now. To comprehend? No. To be bothered with? Yes, for a lot of us. With more simplistic games, it's easier for us to teach and play at the same time, as well as letting people get absorbed in more easily. Something of a 'reboot' wouldn't be a terrible idea, I guess, trying to get a new generation in. The problem is we tend to take advantage of new players or ostracise them and refuse to play with them.

Aggressive recruitment is about all we can do. We're a pretty insular community largely comprised of ex-Pokémoners, old-timers, and other social forum-goers, as well as a few other people who are here specifically for the mafia, and it's killing us, I guess. I've kind of already accepted mafia as dead already, but I don't think it's entirely unsalvageable; the glory days are definitely gone, though, due to a dearth of hosts, players, and good ideas. Now, we just have complexity creep. Honestly, I think the best place to look is -- horror! -- the Pokémon community. There are a lot of people who play Pokémon on Smogon, a bunch of whom have played #fluodome-like mafia on the Pokémon Online servers who supported the script or maybe played it on other sites or forums, or would be willing to get involved in the activity with friends. There's the Orange Islands community, which is a community full of people who love to play games, do activities, and mess around. It's honestly the complexity and insularity of our version of mafia that are so offputting; beginner games are supposed to bridge that to an extent, but honestly, most of our beginner games are either foreign to them or foreign to us.

Anyway, there's this thread now, and if any of us have friends who aren't from this community, you could get them involved and ask hosts to pair them with you so you can teach them, providing people actually make games. Ideally, a few small beginner games and people'd be getting their friends into them and we'd have a new generation of beginner players, but it won't be that simple. It's pretty much all I see as doable about the playerbase, though.

2v1 is broken, but so are most experimental formats. Multifaction is broken in its own way and it's worn its welcome, to be honest.
 
Alright, let's take a different approach and think about the following:

The game of Mafia has lost its meaning long ago; currently it's a name for strategy games that use similar concepts like roles and phases and powers.

And...

It's safe to say that CM as a subforum has seen much better days. Mafia isn't the only game out there. Yeah, there was good reason to make this place Mafia Central a few years ago, but that era is clearly over.

So!

Whether we want to "revive Mafia" or not, what I have in mind is making this subforum an actual Circus Maximus. Like jumpluff said, there are plenty of people who would love to fool around and have a good time. They're not doing so not because they don't want to, but because this forum is dead and there's no reason for them to take initiative and immigrate here, especially when this is "a forum mostly for Mafia games, but Mafia is dead sooooo...". That, I think, is the problem.

The occasional YGO tournament is nice, but I'm thinking of casual fun that any user can jump into. The Circus was a great example. That is how we can get a forum game subforum going.

If we DO want a hustling and bustling Mafia community back, that's a different story. We need to consider what we WANT in something like that, because the strategic game called Smogon Mafia is dead. I see two options: go back to traditional Mafia, or invent a new breed of strategy game, since that's the route this community has taken since multifaction games. We can't call that Mafia anymore, though - that's a worn out facade. It's a strategy game in CM, not Mafia.
 
I think we all agree that mafia has become quite stale. The last few games I have played have been pretty dull, (though I did enjoy both of b_t's NOC's) and I agree that multifaction is quite boring and it's difficult for new players. The first game I ever played here was general spoon/tas's sinking submarine mafia and it was hands down the most fun game I've played here and maybe that's why I kept joining games because I liked that one so much. The reason was that everyone in the game was really into it and the irc channel was almost always active. This kinda atmosphere has been non existent in almost every other game I've joined here.

I suppose I am just repeating what everyone else has said but we definatley need to reinvigorate the type of games that are being run, not restricting but just encouraging simpler games to get more people involved, I know when I first started playing the community seemed really tight knit and it was pretty daunting joining the irc channel for a game and receiving negativity from some of the 'old' players. I think I agree with pluff here (though I started playing a year ago so things may have already changed) we definatley need our attitude towards new players changed, running more standard 2v1 mafia v village games that are more suited to newer players, and some more free for alls because they are damn fun.
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
Part of the problem also seems to be that the "community" itself isn't actually as close and insular as non-mafia players seem to think that it is. I can think of 5 or 6 different groups of players that don't really intermingle off the top of my head, the only one of those that is really accessible to new players is #ffm or maybe #warau but #warau is dead. I think the first step to reviving mafia is providing some incentive for new players to play or just marketing it really well, whilst somehow providing a community aspect that is accessible. That could, for example, mean starting a new IRC channel that encourages new players to join and perhaps reviving some RTM, as a script/bot or regularly hosted. I think IRC is the best method we have for getting new players to join, as forum games can seem more daunting that #fluomafia which is actually really good for learning the fundamentals and such.
 

UncleSam

Leading this village
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Layell said:
First on the table is the Smog Awards and have our own little discussion about those. I’m still looking back on all the games but by far the most interesting of the games to watch was Metroid Prime 2 Mafia
Blue_Tornado said:
The occasional YGO tournament is nice, but I'm thinking of casual fun that any user can jump into. The Circus was a great example. That is how we can get a forum game subforum going.
It's ok you can just say that my leaving killed this forum
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.
Hi, all I can say imo is that I'm just an experimental concept wiz and love experimenting. Unfortunately my excitement and dedication to making games has decreased.

In any event, I've always had a few games on hand that are almost done or in the works. The only problem is me finishing them because either I a) procrastinate or b) get hyped up so much that in the end I somehow procrastinate...

Finally I think the only reason anyone is not doing anything with mafia is not because of interest, it's because of the dedication it takes to put a game together. Somebody has to be really excited to make a game. If that happens, then the people who end up joining become excited and so forth... I have a few other thoughts on mind, like the people in general. Most people are too busy to sit on a tight 2 day cycle to play a game. And if you draw it out further in length, people lose interest. Dedication just has to exist in general, which is why Smogon Mafia tends to lean towards having a village leader because whoever is vl can organize everything while everyone sits on their asses.




Also can we all agree that part of the reason the large majority of the Smogon Mafia playerbase fell out was because of League of Legends? I mean, can we?
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.
Well true, but the process was sped up.

In other words, my point stands.
 
Part of the problem also seems to be that the "community" itself isn't actually as close and insular as non-mafia players seem to think that it is. I can think of 5 or 6 different groups of players that don't really intermingle off the top of my head, the only one of those that is really accessible to new players is #ffm or maybe #warau but #warau is dead. I think the first step to reviving mafia is providing some incentive for new players to play or just marketing it really well, whilst somehow providing a community aspect that is accessible. That could, for example, mean starting a new IRC channel that encourages new players to join and perhaps reviving some RTM, as a script/bot or regularly hosted. I think IRC is the best method we have for getting new players to join, as forum games can seem more daunting that #fluomafia which is actually really good for learning the fundamentals and such.
It's not that it's tightly-knit so much as that a lot of us don't really have so much to do elsewhere on Smogon.com itself with the exception of a forum (which is insularity, since Circus is otherwise uninvolved with the site) and that mafia has an established culture, which, like you said, gives the illusion of being kinda cliquey and inaccessible, I guess. The trick is getting other people involved from other parts of the community. There are already a number of us who do things elsewhere in the community though. I'm glad you're making some efforts to engage on IRC with #circus and RTMs, as I do think IRC mafia is a fantastic way of teaching the fundamentals. Most of us who are still around, at least most of the older ones (not sure about the newest ones, since #fluo's been dead for awhile) got started via #fluodome mafia (or very, very basic mafia on other communities) before jumping into the bigs. RTMs and #fluo mafia are quick and simple.
 

Layell

Alas poor Yorick!
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Top Artist Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Researcher Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
For those who don't remember mafia games were once played in firebot (the troll/joke forum which has now been killed off for those not in the know) so new games were very visible for a while and that helped with getting some people like myself interested in playing, especially when some of the big name users were joking around and having a good time. So visibility like that really helped to the point of making circus.

Anyways I'm reworking an old game I had in storage that attempted to solve one of the problems I found in mafia which was that not everyone had roles that could be interesting, motivated players dying early, and one person taking control of the entire game. I've also reduced the total player count as I think a few small games would be helpful.
 

Yeti

dark saturday
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
Also can we all agree that part of the reason the large majority of the Smogon Mafia playerbase fell out was because of League of Legends? I mean, can we?
LoL was really the final nail in the coffin for mafia. I got into it when I was hosting the dreaded crime BIGS and honestly after some factions just idled and had to have certain members subbed 3 times while others complained to no end and only like 2 were actually content I just stopped caring. League was a lot more fun, less stressful and just newer and fresher. It's not why I lost interest in mafia entirely, but, it was the new thing and a good 'excuse' to ditch mafia when it was already growing stale, tired and repetitive.

I take full responsibility for many of the scrub multifaction games, though at a time when everyone was sick of 2v1 and 2 village games were shaping up horribly imo, in my defense, trying a host of crazy multifaction games is certainly not a crime. Unfortunately I think I single-handedly proved why multifaction is also sort of a bad design that grows stale fast or is incredibly hard to balance. Well not rly the other multifaction games were all like identical to each other or also poorly balanced mine are just notable for being a series of "did u actually think this through."

Probably the funnest game was Red Panda since it allowed people to choose their own poison - nobody could claim any faction was given better roles or had a better focus (information factions blow btw pls never again) etc etc because they picked their own. I think this sole aspect is of intrigue and could be considered again in more detail, perhaps with a more in depth buying system a la Mekkah's work in FE2 with the weapons.

I'd been saying this for way longer than I needed to when it still wasn't being enforced but we NEEDED to have smaller games. The playerbase simply was not there anymore and idling was killing every game that was still being hosted.

I will someday soon post my postgames for whatever games have yet to be posted.. I think MAGMAfia did get posted, not sure, Snype was being super lazy with his portion (no offense), but Red Panda and the apology for April Fools Joke BIGS (it was a somewhat designed game but also mostly made up on the fly) turning out way worse than I had expected. I MUST PROTEST and say that if two of the factions hadn't just endlessly idled and not cooperated, it would have gone a lot better. Yes, the Sea Creatures arguably did have the best roles but they were also the most active faction with the most members next to the Pink who, as it turned out, couldn't actually execute the plans I had for their combination roles. It just so happened the SC were enemies of the Pink and were able to find out more of their enemies faster to sweep the game.

However, I do have AQUANAFIA, a smaller, much more reasonably-sized 1 village 2 mafia game in the works. Pluff was supposed to cohost but that was ages ago, if she still wants to, I'll deploy it. No weird tricks this time, just straight up old school mafia. That is, if Google Docs didn't change and act like all my spreads and docs were gone zzz.

Stuff for Mafia 2013:
-Smaller games
-Only 2 standards at max at one time, or 1 standard 1 beginner
-Better outreach to try and bring new players in, and thus simpler concepts in beginners and standards
-More people with an interest in helping/hosting beginners - even acting as a mentor like we did in Beginner SANDS which I honestly think was one of the best-executed beginners we've had due to that feature
-No expert/big at the same time and only 1 small (pref beginner) game running alongside a big, otherwise we stretch ourselves too thin

If we can improve the attentiveness of our playerbase, erase the idling (the early SANDS games did indeed help erase the idling problems which is what they were designed to do, like their formats or not, they found a solution to idling which is to have the most direct impact on your own WC), gain some more new players to replace the older ones and get successful games going then we could increase the # of players and standards etc again, but for now, we need to just work at establishing some fun, interesting but still basic 2v1s at all.
 
Alright, I know this thread has been dead for a long time, and it's been over two months since 2012 ended, but as a new Smogon mafia player, I feel that I may be able to add some input of the mafia system as it is now, and what could probably could be improved.

Ok, first things first, I joined Smogon somewhere early 2010 (March, I believe), checked out the competitive battling sections, grew tired off that, and ended up in the newly created Socialization of the Empire, as Firebot had just been shut down. It wasn't until late 2012, however, that I dared to show my face in Circus Maximus, with my first game being the Standard game Space Western Mafia, promoted by Itchni as a 'basic' game. Being new, I decided that that should be my moment to jump in.

Now, with that out of the way, I want to share my opinion on the way things appear to be on Smogon, and Smogon mafia in particular. I think that, for new players, starting out in Circus Maximus can be very daunting - it was for me, and I think that this is also the case for other new players. I had been checking out if any Beginner games were starting out, but they hadn't for quite some time, so I decided to join Itchni's Standard game instead.
This brings me to the following point; to lure in more new players, start up more Beginner games. Mafia is itself isn't incredibly complicated, but all these extra roles, extra rules, and the number of experienced players makes it hard to get into mafia. The fact that it is pretty basic in its core is also what makes me like the currently ongoing NOC game, Mafia From The Depths. Going back to more Beginner games; a couple of accessible games every now and then is sure to lure in some new players that are here to stay. It was through the support of others that I started liking during Space Western, and later Aypak Mafia.
This support is something that is largely missing, I feel; while there is a Battling 101 program, there is little to help out new mafia players, with the exception of recent Smog articles. I'm afraid that this keeps new players away, since it's pretty hard to learn a new game, while others already know what to do.

This is pretty much what I have right now; if any of you happen to have some more questions to an inexperienced mafia player, about whatever, I'd be happy to answer. I understand from earlier posts that Circus Maximus has seen better times, and I'd like to be a part of its revival, even if that is through making it more beginner-friendly.
 

zorbees

Chwa for no reason!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Bumping this thread rather than making a new "state of mafia" thread. I disappeared for a little over a month recently (during my own game ._. but whatever) and came back to see no mafias currently going on, and aska's expert game had to cancel signups. We've been talking about mafia being dead for a while but I've never seen it worse than right now. The thing is, what good came of this thread? It was posted 5 months ago, and nothing seems to have changed between then and now. Can we get some serious discussion on actual changes we can make to the system?

Some things I've noticed:

1. Not enough players:

This is obviously the biggest issue, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to fix. I think mafia needs better marketing/advertising/whatever. Pokemon Online has mafia, it seems like we could try to get some people from there. Utilize the global announcement thing that jumpluff linked to a few posts up. Maybe Paperblade/Mekkah/whoever could try to get some people from serenesforest (although I know Paperblade says most of them suck and/or hate outside communication games; I remember Snike played in one of our games once but I don't remember him sticking around). I think we pretty much have to actively recruit people if we want them to try out mafia. One final approach is to try to get some of the old-timers back into mafia, though it seems unlikely. I remember AvatarST and Raikage came out of retirement for dude but then iirc they retired again.

tl;dr: whore ourselves out to get new players

2. Not enough games:

This isn't really an issue if we don't have anyone to play the games, but I feel like it is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If there are no games running, it is hard to attract new players, etc etc. I feel like even when we had a playerbase (albeit still a small one), mafia was fairly dead because we'd only have 1 game running at a time, if that, and certainly not a constant stream of games like we used to have.

3. Types of games:

I posted this earlier in the thread a few months back, but I feel like it is hard for most beginners to transition from beginner games to standard, the way many standard games in the past had been run. Pretty much every beginner was 2 mafia 1 village with standard roles and basically nothing "unexpected". Then pretty much every standard game was experimental and vastly different from the basic games. I tried to do a "basic game with a twist" with YugiMafia but I balanced it fairly poorly, in addition to a lot of the mafia players idling/being bad. I think that is the direction that standard games should go. I wouldn't play a beginner game because they are too formulaic, but if you stay with the general premise of basic mafias but keep them fresh and less predictable, it becomes more what the standard game should be; and after playing a bunch of them, you'd start to be ready for the wackiness that are expert mafias.

tl;dr: beginner=formula 2v1, standard=basic but less predictable, expert=crazy shit

I think the main thing though is point 1, that we essentially have to just ask anyone who will listen if they want to try out mafia.
 
Thought I would just chime in with my thoughts! Just going to touch base on the three points zorbees brought up.

1. Regarding not having enough players, this is the most obvious problem there is right now. Advertising is clearly the main issue, and although it's been brought up multiple times, not a lot has been done. I personally feel that one of the best way to advertise is via the simulator. Having been on and playing on the PO forums for a couple months I can say that mafia there too went through a period of being "dead" for a while. However, the thing that's brought it out of that state was being able to find new players. There's probably 10-15 new players, most coming from the PO simulator's Mafia channel and from playing RTMs as well. Before there were max a single game running at a time, not even getting 25 players. Nowadays, there's 3 games running (including a beginner), with games easily filling 25 players, even leaving a handful (although not too many) of subs. The main reason I feel for that is being able to draw upon the mafia channel and get people to join forum mafia (which is more difficult there since the PO forum community isn't as established as smogon's is). Incidentally, I thought that the playerbase did pick up and there were a couple more players after the introduction of #circus, but once it died down a bit, the new players coming in seemed to evaporate, as the community was pretty much dead. I think a really good way to go about advertising is somehow connecting Showdown! and circus. Even perhaps getting other IRC channels to get people in #circus and having more players learn the game would be a good start. There are tons of people who likely would enjoy playing mafia, they just don't know about it.

2. Don't have much to say about this. I think people would be more inclined to make games if they knew the playerbase was there to support said games. I have a game that's pretty much ready, but the feeling really is "Why host it here when I can host it somewhere else and probably get more players and more interest elsewhere?" Focusing on making beginners also might be a good place to start just to revive the community.

3. If we could almost have beginners running every two weeks or every month, or something of that sort would allow for a greater transition for new players. Instead of having to wait until whoever decides to host a beginner, knowing that a game will be coming soon sort of allows players to retain that interest instead of disappearing after learning that a beginner like game isn't on the shelf for a while.
 
It's pretty easy to make beginner games imo since they tend to be very simple, which in turns means they're easy to balance.
 

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