Even if there is a way for leaderboard, how will you give points on leaderboard ? If all surviving players get points, means there will be partial to players who suicide themselves to make team win... On the other hand if whole winning team gets points it will be partial as players who did nothing for the town will get same points as the player who actually made the game win... The only and best solution I would say is to give leaderboard points for "only" joining Mafia games... We could also make an Event Mafia game where players will receive 5 times the amount of points they used to get in leaderboard and automatically gets started by bot every hours or 2... By seeing this players will join mafia game... Whether they help in game or not is another matter... Getting players is vital point now... There are benefits and harms in using this "only joining Mafia game leaderboard"... In early days, this will be very useful as players will be greedy to earn points as earning is simple rather than winning... So we will get more players in this leaderboard than "winning" leaderboard in the "Early days"... However, as time will pass, players will feel this is shit because even after they do tons of efforts to win the game, they get points equal to a noob losing player greedy to earn points... This will make him leave mafia soon... I hope this helps... But I know its a bad suggestion...
No, it doesn't prevent the targetting issue. Any leaderboard that is made public, regardless of time, will still mark players as "good players", which will still make some players aim for them to get rid of a threat. VirajVora's idea of an "activity leaderboard" may work a little better (since it only shows who play often, not who play better), but only if there's any actual benefit to players. Just having activity points to showoff you know how to /join is not likely to help much.
If others know ways to contribute ideas towards an activity leaderboard, I'm game for it. Otherwise, any other leaderboard through wins, kills, whatever will never occur, due to the targeting issue. That is a given.
There are other possibilities too. For example, I just thought about something crazy to have competitive leaderboard for mafia without targetting issues. What if an actual leaderboard for winning or playing, it was more of a betting system? Like non-players being able to bet on which team will win, and then gaining points if they are right? Probably not something really that attractive, but other ideas like that could also be suggested.
If we are going to make an "activity leaderboard", points should be calculated, based on how many people joined the game. This will promote players, to tell others about Mafia as the more people join, the more points they get. Sample Scenario: Withoutatrace is playing theme Kirby. He is playing with 3 other people. After the game ends, everyone gets 4 points. Withoutatrace convinces Veteran Paudgett and Selena Gomez to come to Mafia and play games with him, as Withoutatrace knows that he will get more points with them playing. Withouatrace plays Zelda with 5 other people. Withoutatrace gets 6 points. It's basically a reward system. If you convince people to join #Mafia and play games, you get more points and a chance to be on top of the leaderboard. OR the "chain" system You join a mafia game. You get 1 point. You join the next mafia game. You get 2 points, for a total 3. This chain continues until you miss a game. Then, you have to start from 1. I think this is the weaker idea, but it promotes continuous activity. For both ideas, we should probably offer some type of reward to the top #3 of the leaderboard, probably a Forum badge. The activity leaderboard might also stop some of the raging or butthurt comments during Dead Chat, and at the end of the game. (Not that I don't like reading these) Even if you died, you still get points.
This means less players will join so they can bet and gain points on leaderboard... You just gave an idea that will decrease population of mafia even further... You actually gave 2 good ideas since I didn't expect from you (just kidding...) Ok so we have 3 leaderboard ideas... 1st - A leaderboard where winning team gets points... 2nd - A leaderboard where by only joining you get points where number of points increases with more number of players... 3rd - A leaderboard where by only joining you get points where number of points increases by joining continuously... Just used my brain and joined all 3 ideas... If I join a 9 player game where my team wins, I got 1 point... Now I joined another game where I win again, I get 2 points instead of 1... Now I joined again where my team won, So I got 3 points by winning the game... Winning 4th game led me to earn 4 points... The number of points increases with increase in number of winning streak... That means, If I lost game 5 and won game 6, I will only get 1 point for winning game 6... Now I lost game 7. Now I won game 8 which had 12+ players... So I will get 2 points instead of one... That means If number of players increase to 12 or more, the points received will be doubled... So If I won game 9, I'll earn 4 points even when my winning streak is only 2... So in short, If your team win you earn one point... If you win continuously, you gain extra points... If you have 12+ players, your points increase by 2 times... If you have 20+ players your points increases by 3 times... If you have 30+ players you points increases by 4 times and so on... I don't find any negatives points in this leaderboard... I hope you all like it and please comment on this... This will be a very good leaderboard according to me...
It was more of an idea to make people at least keep paying attention to mafia even when not playing. Probably that effective either, but having ideas different from a normal leaderboard could help too. There's still the main problem that any win-based leaderboard has: Encouraging targetting. The problem with making a leaderboard is not elaborating a point system, but what will that leaderboard measure and what rewards (if any) there will be. Not like an activity-based wouldn't have that too, but it would probably happen less often.
Any type of leaderboard can cause some sort of targetting. For example, in Tournaments, players can simply not join to prevent the top of the leaderboard from getting any more points. However, if they do not join, they'll also not get any chance to win and get points. This is the same with Hangman. You can mess up the game, for the player with the most points during an Event game. So, I think our best bet would be not to base the leaderboard off winning, rather just simple activity.
@IceKirby I think targeting is not at all issue here... Even if the player with top points is targeted, he may still win if his team wins... So no major issue would come up... After a month or two, common players will stop targeting and play commonly as they would find that targeting won't only make them win...
^People will be encouraged to dead talk because of that. And you know, if we are trying to increase new players, they don't know any better. (Even old players, may try to get away with dead talking, just for points on the leaderboard)
That's not the point. Think about a player who gets killed N1 every time because other players fear him/her. Mafia would begin to get annoying to such person.
The only way I can see a leaderboard working without it creating targeting or being pointless in the form of tracking activity is to have it be with the themes themselves, which we already have with /topthemes. The betting system, while odd, is the closest thing that'd work while incorporating the players without negative side effects.
I didn't understood what you said ? "is to have it be with the themes themselves" means different for different themes ?
No Viraj, but we have that already (kind of) with /windata. What I was talking about was ranking it based on which themes are played most, which we already have. There's no clean way to do a leaderboard with Mafia players directly without some level of targetting being involved.
@IceKirby, if we want to build a leaderboard where targeting doesn't happen in Mafia, it's impossible without hiding the leaderboard... We could make a test run for a month or two to see whether targeting happens or not as full winning team gets points...
i fail to see how a leaderboard would make mafia more active. it doesn't matter how you slice it, but stuff like targeting will obviously be an issue and i think a leaderboard would create a more toxic environment overall. trivia has a leaderboard too but honestly i don't think anyone really cares about it (outside of @Kea this month i guess lol). it's no bad thing by any means but it's not this wonderful thing that draws new users daily. i (and everyone else) play trivia because it's fun, not because of some leaderboard. i fail to see how a leaderboard for mafia would be any different than the trivia leaderboard plus the idea of a leaderboard (competition) just clashes with the values of mafia (fun and games). also this may be a personal thing but i don't really like small mafia games at all. for me, mafia only becomes fun when around 10-15 people are playing and it becomes more exciting with every extra player that joins. i had this idea: game nights. basically the idea is to have a thread and arrange a timeslot (idk an hour or so), where you'd have around 15-20 people who commit to playing mafia for that time. even if it'd only be for that hour, mafia would become really active again, maybe get some new players excited (or older players who see their friends having fun) and just remind people that mafia can be really fun. MA's and other people who care about mafia should get people hyped for this event so maybe it'll work. it's different than any other idea in this thread and it's definitely not perfect but mafia needs some kind of spark and this could be it imo.
I've thought about something like this too, and it could work. I know I don't really like playing non-peak games, partially because I've played so many of them. The possible downside to this is that if people fail to sign up or fail to turn up after signing up, it might shake people's confidence in this system and mafia in general. Also, the system would only really be of use whilst mafia is dead, so it may be of limited use in lifting mafia entirely out of inactivity. Nonetheless, it's an idea I would like to see tried. There should be enough players out of the MAs alone to at least get this started. It is also something I would like to look into for Trivia, so I'm interested to see how it would pan out.
For those who don't know what is Game Night, look here... Good idea @ZoroDark, but I guess it must be hosted by some old mafia player who has lot of close friends rather than a new guy like me... The reason is old players threads have more players joined comparatively... For e.g. Windblown's NOC Space Invaders in Forum Mafia had 25 players which was a peak last year if I remember correctly...
Also, mafia has been in decline ever since QC's birth. Look at fall of 2012. Booming to 12 per game. next summer was even less, next summer was even less, now it's dead. That's why I blame QC.
Removing vepix/daypix was a bad idea tbh. The QC could have possibly come up with some kind of system involving those two games that will make people want to play more.
It's nearly impossible. How do you balance a game that relies on the RNG, guesswork, psychology and luck?
vepix has no skill or psychology or guesswork. it's random killing til there's 2 left then whichever dude got the higher priority vepix wins. it's as much skill as candyland (which has no skill)
You seem to ignore the fact that PS exists too. Anyway, as far as Vepix with skill goes, the closest we could get to that is the version I made, which broadcasts who kills who so you can see priority and such.
The thing I am wondering about is why can't we have themes without skills ? Its a simple fun theme without skills... After playing many skilled games, we have right to play a refreshing game which doesn't need our brain to work... Well, these theme are also responsible for a little mafia boost which happened December... Personally as a mafia player I would get bored playing All Skilled games or All UnSkilled games... Keeping both is good is what I feel...
Hey lol, I think it woukd help Mafia if it was made much simpler. As in the beginner's guide. I stopped reading that after the first text box. Mafia isn't something I or alot of peoole can just pich up and play, and no one really feels like learning everything when they could be battling instead. So if the guides, rules, and everything else was made simpler so it's more beginner friendly. I think more people would join and actually stay in #Mafia. My 2¢ though, don't hate me. ;-;
It's not Mafia that has been dying during that time. PO as a whole has lost lots of players, so it's only natural Mafia would suffer from it too. Other channels like Hangman still get activity because they require way less people to play (you can, in a way, play with someone who logged off 15 hours before you just got in the channel). IMO, focus shouldn't be on balance. I'd rather have an active channel with some unbalanced themes than a dead but perfectly balanced channel. Could you explain more what made you go away from the beginner's guide? This could help making it more friendly for beginners. Although some things like rules and other stuff are hard to make more beginner-friendly, as mafia in itself has lots of stuff going for it. BTW, when you mentioned the "simpler rules" part it reminded me of something I thought before. What if mafia's only rules were activity ("don't go AFK"), botquoting and deadtalking? In a way, those are the only things that actually break the game, others like team voting, team reveal, bussing and even targetting and trolling can very well be part of someone's strategy.
Not really, I suggested something like this on page 1 but no one seemed interested. Which is to say, I'm absolutely down for it. But we would need enough people to put effort into it, and a way to coordinate everyone's activity. The latter could perhaps be accomplished with a weekly forum post with a public poll listing several possible time slots. If someone would host it / take turns hosting it, it would be easiest to gauge everyone's activity on a weekly basis. The game night could take place at a decided time around the end of the week, maybe Thu-Sun, which means the poll could be posted on Monday (or immediately after the previous game night) and close on Wednesday night. Whichever time slot gets the highest returns is the official "game night" which means everyone should aim to be online around that time. At the very least, we know there are 10-15 people who frequent the mafia channel, but, unorganized, usually only end up with 3-5 player games, or none at all. But if this was organized, I'm confident 2-3 hours of peak activity could be created per week. That would be enough to play at least every peak theme once. Personally I'm all for it.
Right, I forgot to reply to the game nights suggestion. IMO, is the easiest one to pull off, so it's worth a try. I would also add that people tell their favorites themes and themes they would rather not play (no themebashing) so those can be organized too and avoid people running away earlier due to lack of interest in themes started.
I agree with Rice's suggestion with rules, everyone's been banned from Mafia at one point, especially when they first started. When your banned from a game that you had no idea on what you were doing the first place, you don't want to continue playing it
Ok, here's my suggestion. Destroy QC, let people add their own themes themselves and if it sucks, then the mafia gods can remove it. That's how it was before QC, and we had some cool themes like Sonic and Wifi Weather Wars. They were unbalanced, but who cares nowadays? WWW was great. Sonic was alright, it was the best sonic theme made so far. I would also suggest deleting most of the themes. When I played, the only themes were the classics such as Mythology, Zelda, Kirby, FF, Default, Elements, Fruit, RO, SSBB, and maybe Weapons. It was always at least 20 players. I think the mafia took a hard hit when QC was born and ALL the themes were deleted and reviewed by QC. I suggest deleting these themes. Parenthesis means up for debate. AC, AOT, (Asylum), Bugs, C14, Cosa, (DBZ), (DN), Dinos, Fantasy, Ghosts, KI, Movies, Ocean, Outbreak, (POTC), (Rulers), Vengeful, dog. These themes I've never played: MM, Shop, Time, Zombies. So those themes are up for debate. I would delete them just cause they're post death of mafia. The list of themes I chose to be deleted are (imo) uncool, boring, lame roles, or reduces player count. There. There's my 50 cents. I'd like mafia to come back alive again just as much as y'all, i've been around since before most of you. From my experience it was QC that killed mafia more-so than PO's steady decline in players.
Themes that would stay: Default, Body, Castle, Caterpie, Chinchous, Clanwar, DN, EV, Elements, FE, FF, FiM, Hoenn, Kirby, Myth, NAruto, ORacle, RO, RPS, Rotom, SI, SSBB, Trainers, Trust, Vanilla, Weapons, Zelda. You may debate.
So you actually think that changing the themes lineup will make mafia go from 3 players to 20 players? Please, this "remove those themes and add that" discussion will not get us anywhere, so let's stop that there. If there's one thing that I actually agree with you is that when there was no QC, everyone and their dog made themes, which would get them more engaged with the channel. Nowadays not many people try making a theme.
Well, I got something in mind... 80% of mafia game makers do not make the game and forget their interesting idea only because one thing which I found after I read this post... Means only those themes which are coded will be going into review... So 80% of users will give up on their idea as everyone will not be interested in coding themes... So the suggestion is... Let people make the theme they want without being coded... Let QC review it...If it goes well, QC will appoint someone or someone will volunteer themselves to code this theme... In this way, we will get more and more theme ideas and one of the major problem shown by @Elite's Aaron will be solved without QC dying...
I feel like the main deterrent for me of the begginers' guide was the fact that it's 18 miles long and I usually play PO and anything play po after hours when im about to sleep. I don't feel like trying to learn all these rules and directions. I feel like it would be a lot better if Mafia had a #MafiaBegginers channel. A place that offered interactive Mafia tutoring, a less stricter rule set so not many players are banned for Mafia related incidents, and most importantly bot advertising in Tohjo and Tournaments when a new #MafiaBegginers game starts, letting people know they can have a chance to learn Mafia basics and not be the only people to do so.
Rice why do you even bother talking to me? It's obvious you don't like me. Most of the themes are stupid and are not worth learning. They remove the playercount when they're started and so they should be deleted. You guys really need to think of what themes and roles are attractive to users instead of not giving any f***s about how stupid a theme is (C14, Dog, Outbreak) as long as it's "balanced." The themes I listed are boring and untasteful. You're not going to revive mafia without removing some things, Rice. I told you the main problems. The themes are boring and uninteresting. It takes a full week to code a theme, assuming you know what you're doing and work on it an hour or two a day, then QC can just reject your hard work like it's nothing. By the time your theme is passed, it's dry and flavorless. Don't tell me to put the theme in creation and development, It's obvious how well that worked. When was the last post in that section? That forum was dead even before the mafia collapse. The effort it takes to make a theme is not worth the rejection of your entire theme. Remove the lame themes. Focus on cool themes. Kirby is successful because everyone knows/likes Kirby and the flavor is good. You got lucky with Kirby. It's not easy making a cool theme that's balanced. Your only other decent game is Rotom even though it's unbalanced. I still support no QC. If there were no QC to reject your theme, there'd be more inscentive to make new themes. I don't know how to grow the mafia playercount. Most of them migrated to EpicMafia.com or pokemon showdown. (they have RTM) The first thing I would do to increase player count is to get rid of the boring themes. Now I'm not saying my themes are great, I don't think FFIX would be very popular. But at least Arceus is better than Castle or Vepix or whichever themes you guys are desperately trying to revive.
Beyoné I am a Mafia tutor I can teach you mafia in lamen's terms. It's a little lengthy but I am a good mafia tutor, I will help you if you like (assumnig mafia isn't extinct)
VirajVora good idea. I have a Dora the Explorer theme that's finished but I never coded it because it's not easy and the chance of getting rejected isnt worth the time and effort I put into creation/ideas/balancing.
How do you reduce a player count that's already on 0? Again, removing themes at this point will not change anything. Themes reducing the player count also happened when there was no QC and tons of unplayable themes, so your point here is invalid. Cool themes are still around. Having bad themes together doesn't change anything, since people can simply not start them if they really don't want to play them. And again, you are contradicting yourself. You say QC ruined mafia, and now you are saying to remove bad themes. But do you even remember how terrible some themes were before QC existed? Some themes would break the script every time it was played, others would simply make no sense at all. Stop blaming QC for everything unless you actually have meaningful evidence that cannot be used against your own argument. And please, stop with the personal attacks. Regardless of the opinion I have about you (which is actually neutral), I'm actually focusing on discussing the problem (though I admit I made 1 provocative post earlier). Now back to thread: If I get some motivation I will try to make the mafia guide easier to read (though I can't say it will really be short, as mafia is not really easy to teach). In the meantime, let's go with organizing some hours to join a few people and play (not sure if here or in another thread, but let's start it here for now). I'm available from around 22:00~3:00 GMT (although I'm not always during those exact times). Actual time I log in/out depends on the mood, but I can adjust it to find some more mafia games.