Ways to improve the DM Mafia experience

[hazelkrs1]

So I personally love playing mafia on DM. I'll leave for little breaks from it at times, but I am inexorably drawn back to it time and time again like a moth to flame. I think overall it's a great experience; there are a multitude of different playstyles, plenty of wonderful mods who set up awesome games which are constantly challenging us to rethink how we look at the game itself, and in general there is usually a pretty civil atmosphere between players.

 

Obviously, there are some issues with it however. But something I have a fairly strong dislike for however, and something that I see all too common nowadays, is people complaining left and right about these issues, instead of ever trying to work on possibly fixing those issues. Complaining about the problems ad nauseum will just make some get bitter and jaded about the mafia experience, and that could lead to the situation getting worse.

 

What I was thinking is that it might be a good idea to have one comprehensive thread where we can open up discourse about some of these issues in a positive, constructive manner, and see if we can work out some possible solutions. Additionally, having an open dialogue will help out both older and newer players, because as more things come out in the open, everyone can gain a greater understanding between each other. This can then lead to better play in games, more enjoyable experiences and environments in those games, and in general can perhaps combat some of the issues that DM normally faces.

 

Two things I want to make clear before we start: No QQ'ing please. As I mentioned, I'm not very fond of the trend of complaining about everything, so if you'd like to add something, please try to put it in a constructive tone. Also no finger-pointing, this isn't about assigning blame to anyone or any game or anything like that.

 

Second, I want to reiterate that overall I do NOT think the DM mafia experience is awful, or terrible, or in need of huge reform. I think our mods, mafia admins, and players all coexist very well for the most part. I think most games are still a lot of fun. I simply want to try and give people an avenue for helping to fix some of the issues we do have instead of complaining about things without ever addressing them.

[hazelkrs1]

Okay so real quick, for anyone that wants to call me or this thread a Carebear hippiestock type thread: You're right. I love sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. I would personally love it if all of mankind could put all the divisiveness between us behind us and join hands in one great big kumbayah circle. It would be completely sweet if every puppy in the world was assigned to a diff child who got to snuggle with it all the time, and keep it for a very best friend that lived forever. Would be awesome if unicorns existed. I would freaking ride one to work, and grow my hair out like Fabio so that the wind could flow through it as I galloped along the avenue basking in the light of the midday sun.

 

If talking positive about things aint your thang, you don't have to pay attention to this thread. I'll still love you anyways and send rainbow kisses to you along the universal telegram service.

 

Another quick thing: Some might find it ironic, or worse, that I myself am starting this thread, in light of some recent events. You're right as well. It is ironic, or worse. I myself contributed to a negative experience for some in a recent game, and for that I apologize. I won't make any excuses for it, I was wrong to carry things too far and make things unenjoyable for others. Maybe subconciously I'm creating this thread as penance for that.

[John E. Kelley]

If unicorns were real, I'd hunt them with my 12 guage, barbeque them in the backyard, and consume them around keg beer.

 

Then come inside and play mafia.

[hazelkrs1]

Okay so, to start things off the first thing we need to do is get some of the issues on the table. In my opinion, there are a few bigger issues which I'll bring up first.

 

Inactivity:

 

Self-explanatory. A lot of games are plagued with it. Most games have at least 3-4 players that end up either getting replaced or modkilled or just lurk like crazy. I understand some play more quietly than others, and I'm not trying to say that there should be this universal standard for activity that everyone should adhere to. There is a difference between a quieter player who maybe has to build up some steam first, or maybe gets better info by judging other's reactions instead of constantly jabbering themselves, and people who end up barely paying attention to a thread because they signed up for too many games at once or something.

 

I also totally understand that sometimes real life stuff comes up, so I'm not saying that anyone who ever has to be replaced should be demonized. Fact is tho, inactive players hurt games. They make it harder to secure lynches, they make it harder for players to scumhunt since there's nothing to get a read on, and one of the worst things about inactive players is that the more vocal players can almost always be relied upon to die first, which makes the game just less fun in the end.

 

Sportsmanship:

 

I don't think this is a big problem per se, but I know I've heard others, especially DM vets, say that part of the reason they don't play as often as they used to is they feel the newer crop of players seem to display less of an affection for sportsmanship. I think DM mafia has gotten a bit more serious than it probably used to be, and some light-heartedness might be nice, but the things I'm mainly referring to are questionable tactics and strategies some use. What can be considered outside the spirit of the game? What should be considered a faux pas? Is there room for hyper aggressive playstyles? How about arrogant and self-congratulatory playstyles? Ideally you want to have a game where after it is over, everyone still has complete respect for each other and there aren't any people sore about how this person or that person used a tactic they aren't cool with. This might be slightly impractical since diff people have diff views on such matters, but that's why we should talk about it.

 

Civility:

 

This is kind of related to sportsmanship, but also slightly different. I myself failed to come close to upholding the standard of civility that should exist in games recently, but there have been a few games in which I've seen snarky attitudes and seen people get somewhat heated with eachother.

 

This is a tough issue imo, because in mafia, it's kind of only natural that players may sometimes get ill with one another. Discussions can turn into arguments, which can turn into heated arguments, which can then lead to personal attacks, insults, and other rude behaviors to popping up in games. This can easily disenfranchise both newer and older players from wanting to play at all.

 

At some level there should definitely be an understanding that the nature of the game means that you must develop thick skin to play. But this doesn't mean that players should be able to bully other players with reprise either. What are the best ways to keep from going too far? I was given some good advice lately that if I am a little upset, I should take extra time before I post to make sure to take into consideration how people will view my post, and if it is taking too harsh of a tone or something. I'm a passionate player, so this extra caution can only help me keep things civil between myself and other players so things don't degenerate into a slinging-mudfest, and it can additionally help me help my team more if I make sure to keep my emotions from clouding my judgement.

 

What about the discussions and arguments that start civil, but slowly get more and more uncivil as the back and forth continues? Sometimes it's hard to see when things are getting too heated when you're in the heat of the moment. Should the mod step in more often? Should other players step in to tell the other players to cool down? Should both players, or however many were involved in the dispute, embrace warmly through their computer monitors and drink digital hot cocoa after the dispute is resolved? Okay well obviously yes to that last one.

 

Anyways, platform is open, I'd like to hear what others think on these issues, and any other issues that could be addressed to help DM mafia grow into an even better experience for all. Hippie Carebear Longstocking out.

[hazelkrs1]

If unicorns were real, I'd hunt them with my 12 guage, barbeque them in the backyard, and consume them around keg beer.

 

Then come inside and play mafia.

 

No doubt Unicorn steak would probably taste delicious. But there's no way you'd ever be able to take one down with a 12 gauge: They'd pound your face in with their sparkly magic.

 

Anything you'd like to comment on as far as DM mafia issues go?

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

can you link me to the meltdown I missed, des?

[hazelkrs1]

Hehe you really wanna see it?

 

It's in the Kingdom Hearts game that just ended. Still stickied at the top (it's relatively early in the game in fact). I've had semi-meltdowns before, but this one was a meltdown.

 

Not my proudest moment.

[berf]

You claimed that a mass reveal at the end of a game is cheap. I still don't understand why.

 

Inactivity sucks, yes. People should not overstretch themselves, but I think those with a reputation for dropping out should just be called on it when they sign up. If they can't handle a jibe like that, what are they doing playing mafia anyway, really...

 

But you're never going to stop idiots. 

 

I've seen players get snarky but nothing major. Just made me laugh as obviously the game is getting to them. If anything it adds to the game, not that I'd ever encourage personal attacks or anything, but when people start flipping out it's always interesting.

 

 

 

And you know really I've never heard anyone complain about unsportsmanlike behavior or anything, or really seriously bitch and whinge about DM mafia. But maybe I'm not hanging out in the right places.

[dapianoplay3r]

Something that people seem to forget is that mafia is all one big act

 

It's not real and don't ever believe that it is real. Everyone is acting

 

So when someone is riling you they are doing it for a game related reason usually. I know sometimes it gets personal but on the whole it's not

[hazelkrs1]

Berf I referenced this thread a couple more times, here's the link again: Themed Games are too easy

 

 

Basically, until Mods start giving nontraditional alignments to major characters in themed games, then mass claims will almost always guarantee a town win unless the mafia has mod-given safe claims. It sort of breaks the game, which is why a lot of mods straight up don't allow mass claims in themed games. It's putting the game into easy mode for town. Why play a game on the hardest mode and go through the whole game just to change it into easy mode for the final boss? And I find any strategy that the other team essentially can't counter to be a little underhanded. What option does mafia have in a mass claim scenario? They can try and claim a really minor character that they think might not be in the game, but it still could be, and even if not their claim will still look so sketchy if everyone else is claiming major characters. They can try and cc someone else's character claim, but thats a really risky move.

[dapianoplay3r]

I'm very much of the opinion that mods leave out some key characters (not heros, but sidekicks) for the mafia to claim.

 

I recommend what I did in the adventure time game. As I cut characters to make a smaller game they became mafia fake claims (that way they were pretty good since I had planned to use them as town)

However I didn't make it easy. I just gave them a list of 8 names I think (there were 4 mafia)

It was their job to research the characters and decide what role to claim, but they knew those 8 names would not be countered

[Yates]

Technical issues are really the easiest thing to fix and the thing that would improve my experience the most. Here are some of them...

 

 

ISO Button: The ISO button brings up the player list for a given game and shows you how many posts each player has and when their last post was. This is great for mods because it's an easy way of checking activity. On MS it's called "Activity Overview" and it brings you to a page that looks like this.  Here you see that Yates has 275 posts so he is likely making at least the minimal amount of effort I'm looking for in a player.  His last post was May 06 @ 06:56am??  I think it's time for a prod!

 

So now I want to see all the posts by Yates in this game to see if I can find some sort of a pattern in his posts or because I remember him posting something important about a cop back on Day 2 but now if I search for cop in the thread I get 157 results.  So in this screen you click on "Yates'" post number [275] and it brings you to his ISO page which =17147]looks like this.  And here you see ALL of Yates' posts in the game without the distraction of everyone else.  It is a TRULY awesome tool that really helps both mods AND players.

 

 

Countdown Timer:  Enough said.  In games with deadlines, having a countdown timer in thread is a huge bonus for game play.  It gets rid of the confusion associated with players in all different timezones and acts as a concrete reminder of pending deadlines.

 

 

Vote Tags:  This is probably the easiest tweak of all.  If the site meta is to have votes look like Vote: Yates, why not create a custom tag that does the formatting for you?  Going back to my ISO page, look at my first vote.  It looks kind of like this: Vote: -L-. By simply typing [vote]-L-[/vote], the forum automatically does this in the background:

<span style="font-weight: bold; background:#FFFFFF;padding: 0px 2px;">VOTE: -L-</span>

 

So a nice tool would be to be able to type [v]Person[/v] and it adds "Vote: " to the front, makes it bold, and changes the font color to red. The output of [v]Person[/v] would be Vote: Person.  To me?  That's a lot faster than typing [ b ][ color=#ff0000 ]Vote: Person[ /color ][/ b ] or even selecting the options from the WYSIWYG.

[dapianoplay3r]

I agree with Yates

 

However I dunno when the next DM update is planned for

[lolguy26]

Yates, you forget that mafiascum is a forum just for mafia where as dm isn't, so I dunno about all those, maybe an iso button but the rest I don't see having any use outside mafia.

 

But talk to verb

[Yates]

However I dunno when the next DM update is planned for

I think the timer and the vote tags can be done independent of any real updates. The ISO feature is likely much more involved and I don't even know how they do it. The tags are definitely a simple fix that can be done in 5 minutes [okay - maybe 30 minutes if you take the time to google and read "Custom BBCode Plugins for IP.Board]

[_CLOUD]

Yates, you forget that mafiascum is a forum just for mafia where as dm isn't, so I dunno about all those, maybe an iso button but the rest I don't see having any use outside mafia.

 

But talk to verb

 

Couldn't the ISO button just be implemented for the "DM Mafia Games" sub-forum? I can see people complaining if there was an ISO-button in the Social Groups, but I'm pretty sure that nobody here would have a problem with it.

[Yates]

... the rest I don't see having any use outside mafia.

Maybe not the tag, but that's the easiest to implement and won't require much effort [see above].  The timer may be of minimal use outside the mafia boards but is also a fairly easy implementation considering its utility here.  Plus, it could be used for stuff like "X More Shopping Days Until Yates's Birthday!"

 

I'm treating this as a suggestion board.  For me?  These changes will make the game portion way more fun.  It's up to admins to figure out if it's worth their time or not.  *shrug*

[_CLOUD]

@Yates: A lot of mods already use a third party countdown timer which they post in each of their VC's and in my opinion it works great so I don't see the need for a DM countdown timer.

[lolguy26]

Cloud, yates is new so he doesn't know but you should know better, mafia isn't played only on this board, my first game was in the BT and they always have a game on,SG has mafia games too, the WT has an annual game, I've modded in the WK and the aiel used to play mafia too, so unless mafia is played only on the board, then adding all of those on one board and not the rest isn't helpful to "DM mafia" as a whole

[Nolder]

I don't see any suggestions on how to improve mafia games besides Yates, which as he noted are technical.

[_CLOUD]

Cloud, yates is new so he doesn't know but you should know better, mafia isn't played only on this board, my first game was in the BT and they always have a game on,SG has mafia games too, the WT has an annual game, I've modded in the WK and the aiel used to play mafia too, so unless mafia is played only on the board, then adding all of those on one board and not the rest isn't helpful to "DM mafia" as a whole

 

I'm also aware of that Chuckles, but the difference between implemented these changes for now only on here instead of everywhere on DM is that there will be me far more support for the former and we don't have to deal with possible complaints that may come with it from people who don't play mafia. My first game was the one you and Cyan modded on the Wolfkin boards, and I also love to play mafia on BT and SG, so I know how important those places are for the game but it would be a good start to try these changes out here first and see how it goes. I think it would be a good start.

[Yates]

@Yates: A lot of mods already use a third party countdown timer which they post in each of their VC's and in my opinion it works great so I don't see the need for a DM countdown timer.

Yeah.  Nolder was using it.  Not a fan. 

 

You have to click on a hyperlink - and that hyperlink brings you to a clock in a timezone which may or may not require math [02:08:00 AST] - which is vastly different from having a clock in your face that says "2 hours 13 minutes 12 seconds until deadline!" from a gameplay perspective.  Also, if you are logging in by phone you probably don't want to have to click on hyperlinks to see how much time is left in the game unless you REALLY need to know.

 

Like I said, it's just a suggestion.  Again, this one is pretty easy to implement if a mod thinks it's worth his time.  And I think people outside of mafia will find other uses for it [see birthday example].

[Yates]

...and we don't have to deal with possible complaints that may come with it from people who don't play mafia.

Is this really a concern?  I guess I never really thought about how adding a bbcode or timer function could have a negative impact outside of this thread.  I can't think of a scenario in which this would ever cause a problem, in fact.  Do you have any examples of why anyone would complain?

 

Like I said, the ISO thing would be awesome but is a whole lot trickier.  I'm not going to hang my hat on that.  The vote tag and timer, though?  Not really a lot of effort on admin's part for a huge improvement in game play.

[Nolder]

Oh no, not clicking a link! Man that's such a hassle right? I mean like why can't the internet just know what I want and give it to me?

 

Anyway, laziness aside, your complaint isn't really valid because the countdown timer I and many others use tell you how many hours is left, not the time at which the deadline is. If I was going to do that I'd just use text and say "8AM PST" or something and let you figure it out yourself.

[Yates]

..the countdown timer I and many others use tell you how many hours is left, not the time at which the deadline is.

http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20130716T0830&p0=137

 

  I clicked on the link to prove you wrong and JUST noticed the timer at the bottom.  So you don't just want me to click on a link, but you also want me to SCROLL??!!  So.  Much.  Effort.

 

Seriously, though, it's a pain posting from a phone.  I'm a big man with a big peni hand.  I have to expand the screen every time I want to click on a link.  And sometimes I end up accidentally dialing a hooker  random number in my phone instead.  It's not easy being me.

 

Anyway, play in a game with an embedded timer attached to the vote counts.  It's SO much nicer.  Like I said, if admins don't care who am I to push?