UncleSam
Leading this village
I promised I'd make a thread similar to this during DLE's game, and decided that I'd tie up another loose end that's been bothering me for a while at the same time.
Personalities Pre-Postgame
Alright first thing's first: it's been almost a year since Personalities mafia ended, and I'd like to give it some sort of reflection/send-off beyond what it got in the thread. I'd like to host a postgame call at some point this weekend if some combination of Da Letter El, LightWolf, billymills, Pidge, kingofmars, moi, Walrein, Bass and zorbees could join one; preferably tomorrow (Saturday, January 30th) night, say 8 PM CST.
I'd like to spend a little time talking about what went wrong with the game here first, however, as well as general tips, extensions to Circus in general, and consequently what changes I think this forum should make to stay relevant.
For your reference, find below:
The Main Sheet, with all actions
Role PMs
Some logs I forgot I was keeping for Postgame
Simply put, the game design was concept-rich but was rushed in execution, primarily due to the timing of when I hosted it (mid-December to late January). I knew that, both for my own sake as well as the game's activity, I had to get the game hosted over the Holidays. This meant that, while I'd have loved to work on it for another few weeks, what I had ready when break started was what went into the final product. There were a number of pretty unimaginative/shitty roles and poorly thought out design choices that I think I would've caught simply because I already wasn't happy with many of them before the game even started; a few examples of this would be the three Prio Up/Down roles, the Regina George/Jim Moriarty roles, and the entire OCD/Village dynamic. If I had had more time I think I would've made it easier to resurrect people while making it even harder to trust them (in order to combat killing the smart players to kill activity), as well as coming up with better ways to make the OCD truly function as a 'mafia' in the eyes of the village (as well as come up with better things for the OCD to do then simply act as a shitty anti-mafia miller faction which just became a group of Masons once people figured they were clean).
More than anything though, this game suffered from not having a co-host. I remember distinctly while hosting Metroid Prime 2 that around Night 3 or 4, I was rapidly losing motivation to do mega-updates at the standard to which I felt was appropriate; if Walrein hadn't been around, a lot more mistakes would've happened and that game's ending would've probably been every bit as inane as this one's was. An active host who doesn't make mistakes is a huge portion of any game, and while I only made two mistakes that I am aware of, I think that many of the players who I highlighted above can attest that they had a huge impact on who won and lost this game. If I had had an active cohost, I think this game would've run much more smoothly.
In terms of the players, I was surprised at how inactive most of the playerbase was. I knew that activity had been generally declining over the years prior to this game (both of my prior Metroid Prime games and particularly Lord of the Rings had had inactivity problems of their own), but I never expected things to have gotten quite this bad. The Megalomaniacs did literally nothing the entire game, I don't recall any non-billymills villagers even attempting to figure out the voting patterns at any point in the game, and even the Epistemophiliacs made no effort to mole the village except for RIP the most Serious of Bananas, long will you live on in our hearts. This has been cited as the fundamental problem with Circus Maximus for a long time, and so let's transition to the other reason I wanted to post this.
State of Circus Maximus
I think that one simple fact might be a better indicator of the current state of mafia in Circus than any other: Personalities was the last 'Big' game to run to completion. Yes, it has been a full calendar year between Big games finishing, and it doesn't appear that there is any undercurrent of desire for people to play in a big game any time soon either.
I think that a few problems are rapidly becoming clear:
1. People aren't that interested in the extensively time-consuming nature of Smogon Mafia anymore.
2. Games with higher interactivity and easier accessibility will only continue to cut into the prospective playerbase for Smogon mafia.
3. It is difficult if not impossible for newer players to cut it in games like Personalities. The activity requirements alone to play at the highest level are insane, and often even the winners don't have much fun playing as a result.
4. Typical Village-style games end up being dominated by the strongest players on each faction; particularly the strongest players on the village.
5. There is a generally toxic atmosphere to playing mafia due to the team nature of the game.
I think that many of these points were becoming clear during DLE's game, though I felt that prior to it's pseudo-abandoning activity in it was a little better than I had thought it might be.
So, let me share a few ways in which I think Circus can grow/address these issues:
1. Find some way to reign in activity creep. This doesn't mean full-on NOC with in-thread posting limits every game, but no one wants to be dealing with mafia stuff ten hours a day for a month just to lose because one of their teammates doesn't feel like sending a single PM the entire game. Similarly, people who just want to talk to a few others and send in a PM once every few days don't want to be blamed for a loss because 'they could've/should've done more'. Macle sent in his actions in Everybody Votes, Ullar sent in his actions in MagMafia, and yet people railed on both of them endlessly after those respective games. Unless I'm mistaken, neither has played in a mafia game since.
2. If you're going to host a complex game, consider making it Free for All oriented, preferably with pseudo-open win conditions. Simply put, FFA games reward individual play by their very nature far more than team games do, as do open win conditions. A good example of this would be Fire Emblem Mafia 2, a game where anyone could ally with almost anyone else, but strong individual play was necessary to pull through for a victory.
3. Host more watered-down and/or NOC games, the smaller the better. Pretty much goes without saying; some people still like playing old-fashioned mafia, and if we can't even do that then why bother with all the bells and whistles.
4. Deal with the attitude problem people seem to have with respect to mafia. A large part of this goes along with point numbers 1 and 2 together, as it does ostensibly suck to put in a ton of effort and have it undone by terrible teammates. That being said, it's a game. Life goes on.
And yes, I have historically been part of the problem with respect to point number 4.
And finally, perhaps most importantly:
5. Branch out to focus on non-mafia strategy games. The forum is already naturally starting to do this, but I think that the movement towards games like the Smogon NOMIC (I actually have a lot of thoughts on this that I'll save for when that gets a postgame/ends, the Smogon LoL Tournament, or the recent Genius Game should be more actively encouraged. Easygoing logical competition is really the crux of this forum, and while mafia should continue to play a large part in that, I think that the days of it solo-carrying this forum are in the past.
For example, I think it's really silly that there isn't a Spades/Resistance/Other Games thread in this forum. There are so many cool games that people like to play and that this community still thrives at, and yet from an outsiders' perspective none of that is visible.
So, I'm going to recommend the following directives:
1. Re-write the introduction to Circus missive. It is entirely mafia-centric, and is more in-depth than a new player should feel required to read to be able to jump into games. It is handy as a reference, but it shouldn't be where we point newer players first and foremost.
2. Re-write the mafia hosting/playing rules for the forum. We are going on six years since they were updated. We should also have a more clear list of Moderators and their responsibilities here so that people know who to contact if they have problems/questions.
3. Decide on the best way to incorporate non-mafia games into this forum.
I can do some of these things, and I'd like people to both post here and contact me separately if they are interested in helping out with any of the above.
What I'm primarily interested in, however, is opinions on what I've posited here, methods to incorporate solutions and/or alternative solutions and implementations, and, well, Personalities Mafia discussion xD
Personalities Pre-Postgame
Alright first thing's first: it's been almost a year since Personalities mafia ended, and I'd like to give it some sort of reflection/send-off beyond what it got in the thread. I'd like to host a postgame call at some point this weekend if some combination of Da Letter El, LightWolf, billymills, Pidge, kingofmars, moi, Walrein, Bass and zorbees could join one; preferably tomorrow (Saturday, January 30th) night, say 8 PM CST.
I'd like to spend a little time talking about what went wrong with the game here first, however, as well as general tips, extensions to Circus in general, and consequently what changes I think this forum should make to stay relevant.
For your reference, find below:
The Main Sheet, with all actions
Role PMs
Some logs I forgot I was keeping for Postgame
Simply put, the game design was concept-rich but was rushed in execution, primarily due to the timing of when I hosted it (mid-December to late January). I knew that, both for my own sake as well as the game's activity, I had to get the game hosted over the Holidays. This meant that, while I'd have loved to work on it for another few weeks, what I had ready when break started was what went into the final product. There were a number of pretty unimaginative/shitty roles and poorly thought out design choices that I think I would've caught simply because I already wasn't happy with many of them before the game even started; a few examples of this would be the three Prio Up/Down roles, the Regina George/Jim Moriarty roles, and the entire OCD/Village dynamic. If I had had more time I think I would've made it easier to resurrect people while making it even harder to trust them (in order to combat killing the smart players to kill activity), as well as coming up with better ways to make the OCD truly function as a 'mafia' in the eyes of the village (as well as come up with better things for the OCD to do then simply act as a shitty anti-mafia miller faction which just became a group of Masons once people figured they were clean).
More than anything though, this game suffered from not having a co-host. I remember distinctly while hosting Metroid Prime 2 that around Night 3 or 4, I was rapidly losing motivation to do mega-updates at the standard to which I felt was appropriate; if Walrein hadn't been around, a lot more mistakes would've happened and that game's ending would've probably been every bit as inane as this one's was. An active host who doesn't make mistakes is a huge portion of any game, and while I only made two mistakes that I am aware of, I think that many of the players who I highlighted above can attest that they had a huge impact on who won and lost this game. If I had had an active cohost, I think this game would've run much more smoothly.
In terms of the players, I was surprised at how inactive most of the playerbase was. I knew that activity had been generally declining over the years prior to this game (both of my prior Metroid Prime games and particularly Lord of the Rings had had inactivity problems of their own), but I never expected things to have gotten quite this bad. The Megalomaniacs did literally nothing the entire game, I don't recall any non-billymills villagers even attempting to figure out the voting patterns at any point in the game, and even the Epistemophiliacs made no effort to mole the village except for RIP the most Serious of Bananas, long will you live on in our hearts. This has been cited as the fundamental problem with Circus Maximus for a long time, and so let's transition to the other reason I wanted to post this.
State of Circus Maximus
I think that one simple fact might be a better indicator of the current state of mafia in Circus than any other: Personalities was the last 'Big' game to run to completion. Yes, it has been a full calendar year between Big games finishing, and it doesn't appear that there is any undercurrent of desire for people to play in a big game any time soon either.
I think that a few problems are rapidly becoming clear:
1. People aren't that interested in the extensively time-consuming nature of Smogon Mafia anymore.
2. Games with higher interactivity and easier accessibility will only continue to cut into the prospective playerbase for Smogon mafia.
3. It is difficult if not impossible for newer players to cut it in games like Personalities. The activity requirements alone to play at the highest level are insane, and often even the winners don't have much fun playing as a result.
4. Typical Village-style games end up being dominated by the strongest players on each faction; particularly the strongest players on the village.
5. There is a generally toxic atmosphere to playing mafia due to the team nature of the game.
I think that many of these points were becoming clear during DLE's game, though I felt that prior to it's pseudo-abandoning activity in it was a little better than I had thought it might be.
So, let me share a few ways in which I think Circus can grow/address these issues:
1. Find some way to reign in activity creep. This doesn't mean full-on NOC with in-thread posting limits every game, but no one wants to be dealing with mafia stuff ten hours a day for a month just to lose because one of their teammates doesn't feel like sending a single PM the entire game. Similarly, people who just want to talk to a few others and send in a PM once every few days don't want to be blamed for a loss because 'they could've/should've done more'. Macle sent in his actions in Everybody Votes, Ullar sent in his actions in MagMafia, and yet people railed on both of them endlessly after those respective games. Unless I'm mistaken, neither has played in a mafia game since.
2. If you're going to host a complex game, consider making it Free for All oriented, preferably with pseudo-open win conditions. Simply put, FFA games reward individual play by their very nature far more than team games do, as do open win conditions. A good example of this would be Fire Emblem Mafia 2, a game where anyone could ally with almost anyone else, but strong individual play was necessary to pull through for a victory.
3. Host more watered-down and/or NOC games, the smaller the better. Pretty much goes without saying; some people still like playing old-fashioned mafia, and if we can't even do that then why bother with all the bells and whistles.
4. Deal with the attitude problem people seem to have with respect to mafia. A large part of this goes along with point numbers 1 and 2 together, as it does ostensibly suck to put in a ton of effort and have it undone by terrible teammates. That being said, it's a game. Life goes on.
And yes, I have historically been part of the problem with respect to point number 4.
And finally, perhaps most importantly:
5. Branch out to focus on non-mafia strategy games. The forum is already naturally starting to do this, but I think that the movement towards games like the Smogon NOMIC (I actually have a lot of thoughts on this that I'll save for when that gets a postgame/ends, the Smogon LoL Tournament, or the recent Genius Game should be more actively encouraged. Easygoing logical competition is really the crux of this forum, and while mafia should continue to play a large part in that, I think that the days of it solo-carrying this forum are in the past.
For example, I think it's really silly that there isn't a Spades/Resistance/Other Games thread in this forum. There are so many cool games that people like to play and that this community still thrives at, and yet from an outsiders' perspective none of that is visible.
So, I'm going to recommend the following directives:
1. Re-write the introduction to Circus missive. It is entirely mafia-centric, and is more in-depth than a new player should feel required to read to be able to jump into games. It is handy as a reference, but it shouldn't be where we point newer players first and foremost.
2. Re-write the mafia hosting/playing rules for the forum. We are going on six years since they were updated. We should also have a more clear list of Moderators and their responsibilities here so that people know who to contact if they have problems/questions.
3. Decide on the best way to incorporate non-mafia games into this forum.
I can do some of these things, and I'd like people to both post here and contact me separately if they are interested in helping out with any of the above.
What I'm primarily interested in, however, is opinions on what I've posited here, methods to incorporate solutions and/or alternative solutions and implementations, and, well, Personalities Mafia discussion xD