Hi, can you not Triple Post? Deleting themes, despite what you believe, will not revive Mafia. No one is going to walk into Mafia and go "Oh fuck yeah, Kid Icarus is finally gone! Time to drive up the numbers in celebration!". Instead, the most they'll see is the same ole themes with the less popular themes gone, which actually makes the place less attractive. Yes popular themes are nice, but the unpopular themes are there to add diversity to the usual cycle and are usually fun within themselves. This can definitely go for themes such as Movies and Ocean. A whole bunch of subjective statements here. Your views only speak for you, not for anyone else. Last I checked, you're not the messiah of Mafia so your views do not eclipse others. For example, I know a few people who can't stand Kirby (mainly due to them thinking we play it a tad too often) but like Rulers. EDIT: Putting every flashy role into one theme will make for a crappy game. Explain to me how you expect a theme with just the samurai, insps, and awesome Mafia roles to work while still being balanced. Cause lemme tell you, it won't. If they were stupid, they wouldn't have passed QC. Regardless of if he likes you or not, this thread is similar to a work environment in my opinion and therefore has to treat you with the same respect as he does everyone else in order to get anywhere. Same goes for you. As for Rice's post, he's 100% right. Before QC, some themes were absolutely dreadful and sure it made things a bit more fun, but that also meant a good deal of confusion, script breaking, or both. QC is kind of a necessity to ensure that doesn't happen again.
@Elite's Aaron I don't know whether Rice hates you or not... I also don't know whether QC ruined it or not as I was not there at that time... But I do know that Rice is right for what he said this time as removing themes wont change a thing right now... @IceKirby Just like you, everyone is wondering who will host Game Night or when will it come up... No one is taking initiative of hosting it up... So why don't you host it ? You are popular and many people will join if you host it... @Others There are few players more popular than IceKirby too who can host it but asking them and getting approval is a problem... 4 of those popular people are Weavile, Finchinator, Samphire and Windblown... Can anyone Vm either of them and inform us in this thread so that we get a lead to start this game for now ? Hoping @Joeypals!! will help me in this case...
It's honestly stupidly simple to compile. Just say when you're usually active throughout the week and setting up a time is a piece of cake. Just have everything listed in GMT and done.
Why should you decide which theme is "cool" or "boring"? That is literally the most bias anyone's ever, put into a suggestion. Some of your "boring" themes, actually have a purpose. For example, I like the anime Death Note, and that is why I also like the theme Death Note. Not to mention, Death Note was always one of the most popular animes, and one of the most played themes. Maybe instead of throwing out suggestions that are rude to more than 3 groups of people, you can contribute to something more. Also, the thing about the QC, the only difference between pre QC, and post QC, is that in pre QC, MAs had a much harder job, and a variety of themes were played. And there were a lot of starting your own themes, where many of those themes killed Mafia at times. Post QC also had a large amount of players, much more activity on the Forum, and a cycle of continuing popular themes. Not to mention, a lot of people aren't even connected to the Mafia forums in any way, and have no interest in actually, coding a theme. Maybe we all should stop pointing figures. @Withoutatrace make a post pls. Are we following one of the activity leaderboard's posted, or we still need to brainstorm? I have also been thinking, of how we can add videos of people explaining and playing Mafia on the PO Simulator Channel on Youtube. Also, @VirajVora what do you even mean? Just have a sMA post a thread, making it official and stuff, and then people will gradually join the "Game Night".
Yes, Fiery Espeon... Making it official or making a different thread for it would matter a lot... We could make it either in Forum Games or in Mafia Forum...
Anyone can brainstorm as much as they want, but, in the end, Micaiah and I have to discuss what leaderboards to include. I'm still open to ideas.
You work on that, I'll get something for a Game Night organized. Playtime Compendium Basically, just post when you're on (using GMT) and it should be relatively simple to organize a game night through that.
There is a process for removing themes, as given per QC guidelines, only overridden by the sMAs given in emergency circumstances. Themes aren't going to be removed due to a one, few, or handful of people saying the theme is "shit", "boring", etc, so move on from that topic.
So now that the Playtime Compendium is up and running, we should probably turn our attention towards attracting new players. While having a bunch of vets playing is nice, we also need to be working towards bringing in new people and making sure they don't feel too overwhelmed. This should also go without saying, but one of the hardest things for someone to deal with when learning something new is being harshly criticized for making one mistake as if they should know how to play perfectly in the first go. Suggest away.
I was thinking of actually waiving a first rule break for new players. For example, new player Espeon2gud plays theme Mafia. Accidentally, ends up botquoting, as he does not know the game yet. Instead of like banning Espeon2gud, he can be given a warning, and asked to read the rules. Any other rule breaks other that that, should result in a normal ban. There have been new players in Mafia, ( I try to convince people from Tohjo to come), but they can't even play, because the lack of players.
@Karp Karpity and I will prepare Game Night starting this coming week. For now we'll follow the plan outlined in my earlier post, but we'll see what needs change and be open to input. I've also thought of a way to incorporate the outcry for competitiveness into Game Night in a non-leaderboard way.
Joey's 3-strike suggestion can actually work. Regarding new mafia players, Game Night atleast temporarily solved the circular problem of activity /users who want to learn /can't learn because of a dead channel and I'd say it's imperative that this doesn't end up as a one off thing and happens enough to get new players into the fold who would keep the channel alive. I have no idea what the current plans for Game Night are but maybe advertise it on Tohjo Falls along the lines of "signup thread for game night etc etc (link) on date " And on the night perhaps :" mafia game night begins at 00:00 GMT watch /play at #Mafia etc " And maybe mentioning that you can just play without making a forum account would attract a few more players implying that signup isn't mandatory to play. I'm not convinced on the leaderboard idea as in the past we'd hit 30+ comfortably without any incentive, competitive or otherwise. Although this is partially due to decline of traffic on po as a whole, quality players and simple themes will contribute far more significantly to the activity of the channel than a leaderboard although it doesn't hurt to incorporate one exclusively (or not) to Game Night to make it feel a bit more special
Our policy for new players, or those with non troublesome pasts, are warnings. Of course, there are limits to this. It's not that anyone gets a definite single warning. all situations are discretion based, as they have always been, or atleast should have been. So there are situations where a player can get a warning again and again, because shit happens, or others where they do get a minimal ban, or where people are being asinine jackasses and they get lengthy bans. a 3 strike policy won't happen, due to the system we have in place now. I can post it publicly, if there are those who wish to view our banning policy. Anyway, Game Night is a sure thing, I support it. It brings the Mafia community together, what little there is left, from what I can tell. As of right now, my activity will be few and far between due to life issues that are ludicrously idiotic, but shit happens. When I deal with them, I'll come back full force and do what need be to make Mafia active, and generally a fun place to be. n_n
Game nights are good and stuff, but some ideas to stirr activity during the other days would be cool too.
These might be of use for anyone trying to increase activity midweek. These are bar charts derived from the Playtime Compendium to track the magnitude of the playerbase over the course of the week for Game Night. At the very least, people could try going on and starting games during hot hours, and maybe you'll run into other people trying to catch the crowds. Spoiler: charts [Sunday]
Ok, I had an idea that would require approval from the sMAs. What if we had a "Beta Testing Night", where themes not approved could get a test run? This could possibly attract curious people who want to see new themes and help with review process (since things are a bit slow). My first idea is that it would be at Tuesday or Wednesday (to reduce the gap between Game Nights), and themes would have to be submited previously and pass the Mafia Checker (and of course, avoid reskins or obviously non-functional themes). Those themes would only be enabled during that period, and perhaps we could even allows some gimmick themes like RNG, Qwerty and Popularity since part of the idea is to be able to play some non-conventional mafia themes for a limited time. Of course, other than opinions if this could work, it would be useful to know if people would be willing to join to that type of event.
Gonna kinda revive this thread. Game Nights seem to be working, but only for that short amount of time. After Game Night, a day will go by and then mafia will just be barren once again, with the occasional non-peak themes being started up. I've suggested this before, but I think the entire QC system should be redone. Everything. I think Miki Sayaka is handling things well (she became owner of the channel a few days ago), but a few of the QC members are very inactive or don't even play mafia anymore, or just aren't dedicated. If we want an active channel we need to have an active Mafia Quality Control team. The "current" list of QC members is very outdated; some people on that list no longer play mafia. I mean, MM is still in review, and it's been in review for months now. The system that Rice came up with works well, but without a dedicated and active QC team it won't be of any use, which I don't think we have right now. Some people submitted themes (LoL and Traits) and they didn't get any reviews, months went by and the threads were closed because the authors became inactive. If the QC won't show any interest in the theme, then the author will just get bored with it and probably end up abandoning it. This has happened with some other themes as well. tl;dr Completely redo the Mafia QC system, replace inactive members with people who are willing to give thorough reviews when asked, and get the QC system up and rolling again.
I blame everyone's collective maternal role model. No but really, it usually takes some conversation to get people rowdy enough to play. I know it is still school time so that is a pretty good reason for some people. Reading things over, QC seems to be a popular point of discussion. I've been talking about buffing QC again, but haven't really posted much on these forums. My point is to make it easier to figure themes out, be capable of churning out responses to themes and more importantly why. Sometimes a theme just doesn't work, sometimes it has promise and can be ironed out for general consumption. I'm for a QC reboot, but a rebuff works well too. It shouldn't take long for things to happen, but sometimes life happens in between and that's just how it goes.
I'd think a rebuff would probably be best. Replacing all the inactive QC is something that can be done. As of now that QC thread is very outdated and needs to be updated or something. I'd say just replacing the thread altogether, but it's Miki's (I think?) choice.
Bringing this back to discussion. We should really add the Beginner's Guide to The Tohjo Falls message when a Mafia game starts. Adding the guide onto the Tohjo broadcast could help bring more players into Mafia, and help people learn how to play Mafia. So when the next game starts, they will be able to play and know about the game and how it works. The current message in Tohjo is : (16:44:26) *************************************************************************************** (16:44:26) ±Game: A new Trust-themed mafia game was started at #Mafia! (16:44:26) *************************************************************************************** A new message could be: (16:44:26) *************************************************************************************** (16:44:26) ±Game: A new Trust-themed mafia game was started at #Mafia! Here is a beginner's guide to playing Mafia: http://icekirby.github.io/PO-stuff/beginner/ (16:44:26) *************************************************************************************** (This could be worded better, just an example to get an idea) Edit: Also, the theme guides for each theme should be added onto this broadcast. (Still a work in progress, but several popular themes have been done)