Smogon finish a mafia game with salty postgame posts challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)!
AG and pulsar played fairly well this game, town didn’t. Town didn’t read much they just liked or didn’t like each others personalities, which let AG skate through with very little logical consistency and pulsar skate through with one clearly coached isolated burst of content provision but not really any more than that. Skipper vote D2 was outlandish when I died I predicted in graveyard that he would be the N2 kill because he was highly town with good reads (and people on town said I scumread him when he was town in my reads list, I just had him as at the stage the least town of my townreads when both scum were in my 3 scumreads :P ). Haruno kill D1 is also very bad because it did not have an attitude to long term gameplay, the reason I had to pop the kill on Ehmcee was he never leaves the PoE for the rest of the game meaning he would always be a misvote at some point; Haruno did not occupy that space and so if Ehmcee had been voted I shoot AG or pulsar N1 instead as my two scumreads left.
Overall town didn’t play well again but primarily that is because of a lack of team coordination. Everyone scumread AG at various points but then dogpiled on skipper who was far less scummy than AG because there was momentum behind it. Momentum is generally a red flag on votes because mafia attempt to limit snowballs on mafia wagons. This is especially true D1 and gets less true the further into the game you get (as bussing is a better strategy the longer the game lasts without a mafia death).
LS and skipper played well and were obvtown, and had some of the best reads in the game. Everyone else’s reads were far off base and the game goes completely differently if people make the leap of “wow lots of us scumread AG and he was also flipped town Celever’s top scumread when he was alive, let’s just take the plunge”. A lot of people on Smogon are being shielded from getting voted because of reputation or veterancy and that’s sending town into an off-base spiral every game.
This isn’t salty it’s actual tips. Mafia always play as a team so since Smogon players aren’t playing as a team when they’re town right now it is making the mafia drastically win. I don’t buy into the “people will get better as town once meta reads become better” argument because the problem is this individualistic attitude. Particularly insofar as people not liking early game and so basically not trying; this game is proof that it’s possible (and not actually that difficult sometimes) to solve the game D1. It also gets easier the more people try to do it instead of sitting back and following the leader. Me, Zippy, LS and skipper were the only people who tried this D1, including the mafia really (because AG had so many consistency errors that the most benefit of the doubt explanation was he wasn’t really trying to solve).
Not pushing out your top scumread because game direction is going elsewhere is fine. Being annoyed that someone isn’t contributing or solving that much is fine, as long as you can accept it comes from a towny place and don’t try to vote them anyway. And also just being nicer to each other would be a good step, IK Zippy did not kick his first game off with the nicest mentality but I worked with him well D1 and other people on town did not properly respond to his improvement. I still think Zippy has a good head for the game but does need to develop his overall game strategy and team play, he’s also not the only person this applies to in this game.
Final note is in a smaller game like this where we had good subs, it would be good if Haruno actually gets subbed out N1 and that this would be known. 0 content posts in a day should be sufficient for being subbed out even if fluff posts were made.