Many people in Mafia sometimes claim that people who are silent are definitely bad. For example, I played a small game of FF with about 7-9ish players. Day 1, they voted off poor Locke because he was too 'silent'. Some people are genuinely silent and not talkative. What are your opinions on this?
To me, players can be silent for a few reasons: 1- The are bad and don't want attention drawn to themselves. 2- They have a role that gets info (spy, inspector, any role with startup reveal) and are busy connecting people through PMs. 3- They're afk. 4- They're a villager with nothing to contribute so they just stay out of the way. 5- They're an MA and don't want people to know they're playing so they don't get hated. xD I usually interpret silent as "busy", not "bad." If I'm mafia, I usually target quiet players because I find it more likely that they are PRs. As a villager, I target the ones who speak a lot because it's the mafia, not the village, that has something to prove. When someone is trying too hard to convince me they're good, odds are that they're lying.
I sometimes try playing silently regardless of my role just to confuse people :x The thing is that sometimes you will suspect someone who's quiet because you know that person usually talks more. It's not only about being quiet or talking, but about having a different behaviour than usual.
Solace has a good list of possible reasons why to be quiet. Rice's post is probably the main reason imo. When you're a villager you usually have nothing to do, so the optimal thing (in my eyes) is to go around in the chat advising PRs what to do, making sure people connect, trying to look for potential mafia due to behavioral shifts. I know that when I get a villager role I will tend to be more talkative because I have nothing to lose if I die. In fact my death may have stopped the mafia killing a PR. Not talking =/= inherently scummy, although because of the ideology I explained above, people try voting off quiet people, which is sometimes reasonable because if you're not contributing to scumhunting, you're not acting in the interest of the town. This is probably more true in Forum Mafia NOC though because in server mafia PMs are allowed and that as Solace said is a valid reason not to be talking in the main chat. As a side note, I usually target the most talkative players when I'm mafia (that is, the most talkative ones that haven't claimed villager) because less discussion = good for the mafia. When I'm village I actually go for people who are not silent, but say a few things once in a while that DON'T contribute to the village (fluff, emoticons, saying lol, repeating what others say). And like Rice I change up my playstyle every so often so people can't catch me for my "meta" (typical playstyle).
In server, silent people aren't necessarily usually bad, but talkative people are almost always VT's. As Mafia, I always target silent people, since crossfire or hitting PR's works out nicely either way.
Pretty much. The only problem is with the people who jump to conclusions and say silent = bad. Mafia etiquette should be that the bandwagoning fingerpointer gets lynched, but that rarely happens so the practice continued. But really I only entered this topic because I thought it was about silence as a game style, which I think is absolutely fantastic with the right roles.
mafia is an unpredictable game. trying to establish commons for players to abide by is only going to cause people to break them. wasnt it a custom for the mafia to be silent like a year ago? thats what I remember when I joined, and things have changed, people have gotten trickier over the past year and such.
Well, Silent = Bad doesn't really work since They Could be a PR that is trying to hide their identity, afk or a Mafia etc... Pretty much as what Solace said.