Weekly Game Night Schedule

Discussion in 'Mafia' started by Whereabouts Unknown, Apr 5, 2015.

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  1. Whereabouts Unknown

    Whereabouts Unknown Absolutely Stunning Forum Moderator Channel Leader Forum Moderator Channel Leader

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    [​IMG] Game Night [​IMG]

    Welcome to Game Night! The purpose of this thread is to organize Mafia get-togethers at a scheduled time at the end of the week.

    Mafia Channel Events Schedule:
    Unofficial Themes: Friday 22:00 GMT - Saturday ??? GMT
    Official Game Night: Saturday 22:00 GMT
    Theme Review Period : Sunday 22:00 GMT - Wednesday 2:00 GMT


    What is Game Night?
    Game Night is a weekly event to gather all players of Mafia, veterans and newcomers! At the end of the week, everyone will come together to play peak themes.

    How Do I Join Game Night?
    The only thing you need to do to partake in Game Night is to go to the #Mafia channel on the main Pokémon Online server at the determined time.

    When is Game Night?
    Game Night is a two-hour slot at the end of the week. Game Night will be on Saturday at 22:00 GMT for every week until May 30th.

    When is Backup Night?
    "Backup Night" is when unofficial themes are enabled for 24 hours before Game Night. Come to the Mafia channel to play RNG, SI2, and all the other silly themes!

    When is Review Period?
    Themes in Review will be enabled for a bit over 3 days from Sunday to Tuesday. This is to allow QC to make fair judgements of the theme, and to help everyone get excited for new releases.

    How Are Timeslots Nominated?
    The most popular time slots based on the Playtime Compendium are the ones that get chosen for Game Night. Be sure to leave your activity times in the appropriate thread so that convenient times can be nominated!

    All times are listed in GMT!! Please make sure to write your timeslots in GMT, and remember that Game Night time is listed in GMT as well. If you are having trouble converting your time to GMT, please use this website as a resource.

    Event Game Night Schedule:
    6/27: Classic Game Night - Come play ancient themes that haven't been enabled in ages! Including older versions of classic themes like FF and FE.
    7/4: Space Invaders Arcade Night - Every SI gimmick theme will be enabled, and played chronologically.
    7/11: TBD

    Other Things
    Feel free to discuss related subjects in this thread. Discuss in advance which themes you would like to play this Game Night. Offer ideas for other Awards. Offer more general suggestions; I'll leave a list of things I would like feedback on for future Game Nights.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2015
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  2. Pangaea

    Pangaea resto en peaco

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    I think Unofficial Themes should be played moderately and should be something of a special event. I'd suggest maybe having a game night once per month or twice per month for those unofficial themes.
     
  3. Whereabouts Unknown

    Whereabouts Unknown Absolutely Stunning Forum Moderator Channel Leader Forum Moderator Channel Leader

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    We thought about doing them once every two weeks. But why not have a reason to make mafia active two nights a week every week?

    How about, we collectively choose ~10 themes from the Unofficial Themes list and enable them? We can make it so that no Themes can be revived for two Backup Nights in a row. That way, it isn't a spawn of 35 new themes every week, and it's still a "treat" to get to play a certain Unofficial Theme, since they only occur about once per month.
     
  4. Pangaea

    Pangaea resto en peaco

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    I suppose it could work, but I'm just worried about Game Night becoming something not really special anymore. :x But the ~10 different themes is a nice idea. Of course, I think some moderation is needed on the amount of (I'll call them 'gimmick' for now) gimmick themes we have, especially with SI. SI3 and SI6 aren't really necessary tbh.
     
  5. IceKirby

    IceKirby A.K.A. RiceKirby

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    I'd rather have the activity we get during Game Nights being something normal than a special occasion.
    IMO, there's no need for such rotation, since there's a chance people will come with more crazy themes during those times.
     
  6. Pangaea

    Pangaea resto en peaco

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    I suppose, but I still think some themes should be removed *cough* all the remakes *cough* so that way were aren't playing a bunch of remakes of the same theme every night.
     
  7. Fiery Espeon

    Fiery Espeon The fire never bothered me anyway ~

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    Why not all the themes? The Mafia community seems to like them, and /topthemes should give you an idea about their preferences (but it isn't that accurate because of theme authors starting their own themes). Remakes are a fun way to see alterations of themes which give you an idea of "what if _______ was ________." Also, gimmick is not the correct word to say as there are many that are actually not gimmicky, so a better word would to use would be Unofficial, as they are not QC approved.
     
  8. Pangaea

    Pangaea resto en peaco

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    6 remakes of SI aren't needed. Maybe one or two are fun, but 6 is just too repetitive. Not even sure why some of those were added. Tbh the Crobat one doesn't make sense, kinda just seems like another form of SI2.

    Also, the definition of gimmick is "a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business.", which is what we are trying to do with these themes. We are trying to get more activity in the channel. But if we had them up all the time, then we might as well not even have a QC system (since people could just ask MAs to upload their themes onto the server).
     
  9. Fiery Espeon

    Fiery Espeon The fire never bothered me anyway ~

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    We were already planning to rename themes, like SI4 into Sweets, and so on. Also, once a week is not the same thing as all the time., even though you may think so. You may consider it a gimmick, but we will still refer to it as unofficial themes and a way to revive Mafia.
     
  10. Pangaea

    Pangaea resto en peaco

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    Renaming it doesn't make it not a remake.

    Gimmick themes are themes used to review Mafia. Unofficial themes, yes, but they're gimmicks; they're used to stir up activity.
     
  11. IceKirby

    IceKirby A.K.A. RiceKirby

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    I don't see a problem with remakes having names like SI2/3 etc. In fact, it makes more sense to since people will know instantly that they are joining a game based on something else and that part of what they know about the original theme may be still valid.

    The problem with those remakes are those that are too far away from the original version (like the sweets-version SI) or those where only a few numbers have been tweaked (like Rotom2).
     
  12. Pangaea

    Pangaea resto en peaco

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    This is what I meant. A few remakes (like SI2 and SI3) are fine because they're pretty enjoyable. But then it gets kinda repetitive when you start adding more of them. Eventually they don't even make sense (like the Sweets SI or the Crobat one). Only thing I noticed about Rotom2 was the higher chance of getting Rice or Shiny.
     
  13. Roild

    Roild Member

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    An altname change would be preferable to [theme]# if said theme is just flavor change or has a better name in general. It keeps both options available, but the better name would be shown. The name based on the original is actually more confusing because the player needs to figure out how to change the game based on what else is changed (village not supposed to know LC in that one SI. I used the fact that I wasn't supposed to know that to win once. >_>. Bad.) In general, adding numbers to a theme isn't a good idea. It only works with the extra themes since they're already supposed to be ridiculous.

    On a different matter, adding ridiculous themes excessively kind of sucks. It was nice when the server broke or once in a while in general, but making these things the norm isn't a fulfilling experience. I'd be for breaking that down more to once or twice a month instead of every week.
     
  14. IceKirby

    IceKirby A.K.A. RiceKirby

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    This discussion would probably be better suited to the Unofficial Themes thread, but anyway.

    I don't see those variations as a bad thing. It's cool to experiment new things in themes since currently we have a low number of theme makers around. Of course, that's only for themes that are actually variations, some are just a poor excuse to reuse the theme's name.
    In any case, if the theme is an actual variation, numbers can make that fact easier to understand.

    What I think that sucks is when there's nothing happening at all in Mafia Channel. If those themes can help bring the activity back, I'm all in for them.

    But I do think that a limit is necessary. Some of those themes are indeed too ridiculous to be there even for the "Free Themes" night. The main example is SI6, which is just an internal joke that was acceptable during April Fools, but now doesn't add anything that SI2 already doesn't.
    Some of these themes are even making me remind of the time when QC didn't exist and was created because bad themes like that were appearing too often.
     
  15. Whereabouts Unknown

    Whereabouts Unknown Absolutely Stunning Forum Moderator Channel Leader Forum Moderator Channel Leader

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    There is a limit to the things we'll enable during Backup Night, so we won't be enabling SI2-SI9 every week. There are some staples (like the RNG series) which will be back every Friday. Other than that we'll allow new themes to be added with limitations, e.g., we won't add more themes if there are already 5 which haven't been played yet. Otherwise we end up removing a ton of themes that weren't even played on Saturday.

    On another note, for everyone who's noticed a few extra themes sticking around after Game Night lately, I've been allowing 3 unofficial themes during the week. Usually I've been going with Mafia and Questions because they're diverse enough to be worth playing many times, and then one other theme which was new or popular during Backup Night. You can nominate other themes to stay either on the server or in this thread, and I'll try and pick the ones that are most popular based on that.
     
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