So according to AJ, there have only been 2 village NOC wins on this forum, after some recent games there has been discussion of villages's shortcomings and the same things seem to come up often, such as... Village not willing to discuss things with eachother Active players being killed off General inactivity and/or not fully paying attention to the game So I think this thread could be useful to discuss how in general villages here could improve, what they do right and what they do wrong and some general tips to players on how to effectively play as village.
inactivity is the #1 detriment to villages. there is no doubt about that imo. rarely will you truly see a village lose because of bad village play (i can only think of one game where that truly occurred) and neither will you see a mafia truly outplay a village (discounting beginner game destruction). i think in this sense most PO games for the village without inactivity are losses due to bad luck. good village play and good mafia play usually means that in that games will go to lylo which i think is a better sign of if the village is winning (from there it does seem to be more about luck). looking at games that have gotten to lylo or the village has won before that point, i think you find more often than not that villages do will to get to that point. is there a way to win those lylos more often than not? probably, although i'm not sure how you would get better at that. basically i think we are better than we give ourselves credit for so if inactivity causes villages to lose, activity would cause them to win right? maybe a little oversimplified, but i do think that's a really key point. just posting and being active is so important in NOCs in that it really allows villages to get to lylo, get to positions w here they can take the game. "bad" village play rarely ever happens in this regard considering that nearly that creates discussion forces mafia to post which makes them easier to catch. RTM games are won more by villages because there is so much more pressure to post "correctly" from the mafia vantage point - all things considered, being active is far more important than anything else imo of course, making people be active is a lot harder. but i think that as long as people are encouraged (especially those who aren't the "usual suspects" in terms of posters) to post, then it becomes a lot easier for the village to pull out a victory
jalmont touched on the activity issue which plagues larger villages, but there's something to be said for smaller/more active games being lost for different reasons. too many townies are followers; players will let two or three "better" players take the reigns and kinda just phone in their opinions and maybe throw a vote down here or there without actually having any conviction behind what they're doing. look at POAM: most of the remaining village players in MYLO felt comfortable just following TIWSS's read on Beast rather than following through on other scumreads, which could have prolonged or even won the game for the village. and to be honest, I never felt threatened at all by any of the votes on me since they were all half-hearted and clearly didn't amount to any actual pressure on me. yes, scumteams win a shitton because of activity, but they also win because many villagers have a hard time dealing with the fact that they can be wrong and so they act wishy-washy and indecisive, which allows scum to easily control a game. in short: if you're a townie, stop being a fucking sheep and have the balls to push your reads though to a lynch.
Yo. Nice thread nm The combination of mafia killing actives and inactivity is such a crippler! This is very true. And I really hate it because it almost gives credibility to the "if you think you're good you should purposefully try act a bit scummy/lurky to avoid nk's" which if several people do that it just ruins games. If you read this and then do that I'll be sad. But I don't think that's entirely the story here - as in I don't want to let us all off the hook. Which is where meowmix's stuff comes in + a bit of a dopog rant. Regarding the sheep thing I do think that is true in a general sense - people are pretty content to "follow" the big names in terms of "yeah that guy is probably right" and not vote them. But what I also think is at the same time people have been really unwilling to build large wagons early, and there is a lot of non-voting/voteparking [without real force/push/pressure like meow was saying] which is generally (at least the non-voting) really detrimental to information gathering and getting pressure on people. Combine this with sheeping and inactivity and the picture is kinda people will just bum around for a couple days, saying their own stuff, and then when the pressure gets (one or two days before deadline) on they will jump off their scumreads and defer to bigger names and just wagon someone good players suspect to their death. I think that's what many of the lynches in the last few nocs looked like. Perhaps this is just me saying I don't feel enough back and forth in our games where villages actually work together. Like big names will wagon people and then if the person's town they won't be able to mount a defence to satisfy the player + sheepers because lol it's one day till deadline. And because big names are wrong at least 50% of the time (because I mean even balls to the wall amazing players are only hitting .500 on their good days) we just lose players because there isn't enough discussion and we have to wagon someone. And I guess to come full circle a lot of that comes from activity. If other people are lurking mafia can be really content doing the same and I would even (somewhat hesitantly) say they should lurk on PO because we don't have enough people generating content that lurkers stick out. If each player don't generate content then we have less to analyse and also more for the mafia to hide in. So I guess it is in large part activity. But also people unwilling to contribute early in days, whilst weakly pushing their scumreads without talking about it which means no discussion/pressure, and sheeping big names late in days which really leads to crap wagons. And mafia are not afraid of that at all as meow said. I think that is at least a semi-accurate picture of what goes on. I'm gonna write a guide up/something of substance tonight becuase I finished uni stuff for the week. Not that I claim to be super victorious scumhunter dopog but it'd be nice to at least have some materials that people can read. It's pretty much looking like; don't be afraid be committed to the game discuss stuff with people VOTE WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS be open about confidence of stuff be nice and use smileys : ) although it may just be everyone's tips for playing as town from that survey - that'd be pretty cool too I'm tired - may not make sense, espeically may have misrepped/disagreed accidentally with meow but it's what I'm feeling also that sense of fear of messing up or being too risky / getting lynched that newer players - actually all players let's be honest - might have is a big deal
It's usually the active/noisy players that dictate the style of the game and the few active scum that diverts. From my experience, even with decent activity on the forums I still find it hard to generate as much content as I used to because Forum Mafia isn't as linear as Server Mafia where private communications and abilities can singlehandedly win the game. Sometimes, I do get annoyed when I see the same few people joining Forum Mafia games just to end up repeating their habit of being inactive and eventually being lynch fodder. I've even brought up punishments for people that continuously do this! I do hope that something is done about this soon because joining PO Forum Mafia has just gotten less and less appealing because of all the infinite prod dodgers.
if you have changes to suggest why not just out and say them instead of hinting at it ??? no need to be passive aggressive, i'm on your side lol
have you considered the possibility that maybe setups aren't biased enough towards town or are too biased towards the mafia? having stronger town-related roles (especially investigative ones) might help if this is actually a problem edit: having stricter activity limits can help too (read: shorter prod deadlines or longer days); it's far easier for mafia to turbolurk by if they only need to post twice or three times each day to avoid being prodded, and much harder to do if five posts a cycle or so are needed instead this also means that it's more likely that people who just end up being continually inactive are more likely to get subbed out (since there's more chances for them to be prodded) rather than just barely hanging on if you want someone to contribute it can help if you give them a guideline on what you want them to talk about; it's easy to be paralyzed because you have no idea what you're supposed to say, so giving them a bit of help might make it easier for them to contribute