Mafia in 2012

[Blue_Tornado]

Whoring ourselves out as you've nicely put it is pretty much showcasing the fact that we're beating a dead horse. Get Smogon users to play Smogon Mafia. If they don't want to, there won't be any. Getting the older community to join in again is similarly dumb because they left for the same reasons the '10 community left and so on. They'll come back if they want to.

If you want my suggestion, it'd be to start from scratch -- make a very simple big game and advertise it across the site. If 50+ users play you bet that some of them will be hyped about playing more.

~

I may as well address what I think is the problem. The people that want to revive the scene are the same people that are just as (maybe slightly less) tired of it as the rest of the dudes. It's also the reason the whole #circus thing died. I can attest to have been guilty of this in the past. This won't happen if and when a new community takes over.

~

We could make the Make a Big Game idea a sort-of-project, by the way. Plenty of the oldies chipping in with designing and advertising. Having one dude do it defeats the notion of, you know, a communal revival.

 

[zorbees]

I agree with a lot of your post B_T, but I don't think we should just let mafia die when there are still a good amount of users who enjoy it.

I agree that making a big game and hyping it would help. I've been talking to Mekkah and billymills about the possibility of (at least for now) getting rid of everything but big games. Theoretically, the people that want to host will be forced to adapt their games to a larger scale and more big games will be made. I also think it could result in more traditional games because it is already somewhat difficult making an experimental game for 25-30 players, so it'd be even harder for an even bigger game.

I think the problem with this is that in practice, many of the prospective hosts will just say "eh, fuck it" and not put in the work to make a big game. We've had talks of mafia dying/being dead for a while now with no solutions, we need to actually do stuff.

I think the "make a big game project" is good, but you don't want it to be too big of a project because if too many people are too knowledgeable about the game, it will reduce the playerbase. I do agree though with the idea though, especially because the old time hosts who are less motivated could help people who are interested in hosting but don't really know enough about it.

 

[shinyskarmory]

Well, in order to make a big game we have to find the player base to run a big game. Last time we tried was with League of Legends mafia, which ended on Night 3 or 4 with pretty much everyone still alive, 2 factions where nobody sent in their actions, and a player who didn't even realize that they were dead because they never entered the anonymous forums.

Big games are awesome and a lot of fun; however, right now I think that we're trapped in a circular logic loop. We need more players to run Big games; however, we also need more games to draw more players.

Ultimately, we need some kind of new approach to mafia because the VILLAGE LEADER SYSTEM just ruins our unique kind of mafia, and while we can Bandaid the problem with NOC games every few months it won't solve the problem. We need games that force every player to be engaged and active, instead of just letting the leader call the shots. And those games need to not be expert games.

I had a cool idea for a game that fucked over the village leader system pretty badly, but it also has pretty questionable balance and only has 15 players. And it would probably have to be an expert because of the stuff in it, and I'm definitely not qualified to host expert.

so yeah

 

[zorbees]

In my opinion, its not the village leader system that is bad, but the games around it. I think if you introduce more uncertainty into the game, it is harder for the leader to gain trust, and thus everyone has to think things through, relatively on their own.

Take a look at Chaos Mafia (postgame linked). Due to all of the uncertainty, due to misinformation and recruitment, it was pretty hard for the players to trust each other. Hipmonlee, who was generating a lot of discussion and doing a lot of the scum-hunting, was nearly lynched day 5 (which was towards the end of the game).

The solution definitely isn't NOC, because NOC is completely different from the type of mafia we're accustomed to. It involves completely different skills for the most part.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66422

 

[Blue_Tornado]

Yeah, OK. Assuming we do it during the summer I know I won't be attending anyway due to being busy so I can help with hosting.

About advertising -- I think a good way to look at it is that we're secluded from a lot of the community (this is a running theme on this site), and that we might want to change that if we hope to get something rolling here.

 

[askaninjask]

The death of #fluodome has entailed a stop in the influx of new mafia players. The IRC mafiabot was the best way for new users to learn how to play for years; it's how me, Altair, GK, and probably most? other users learned. Also, we don't need to constantly host beginner games for the bot to work. Getting a mafiabot back into a popular channel would do wonders.

 

[zorbees]

I would definitely agree that the mafiabot was a big help. I wanted to play forum mafia, (I hadn't even been on IRC at this point), but didn't know much about how to play. I had read the first couple of Smog articles Mekkah wrote but there was very little information on strategy. Don't remember how, but I somehow was recommended to try out #fluodome mafia to learn the basics, and it helped greatly. I remember during my first game of fluo that I had no idea what I was doing, I was BG and wasn't claiming to anyone and just protecting randomly. Play some more fluo, yada yada yada, now I'm one of the better players who hasn't retired.