SMITE Role Madness Mafia (OVER AT LAST!)

[Antihero]

/shrug

i don't know why mastin's getting an inordinate amount of hate. there were enough bad reads to go around for everyone.

[ZeL1nK2]

Because no one else was blatantly lying about information they knew to not be true.

[ZeL1nK2]

I am not criticising mastin's reads (everyone in this game had not-great reads). Just mastin's decisions.

[Cephrir]

i could see letting a third party know who the scum are, though i would never do that myself and it could have made the game totally stupid

i just don't especially appreciate being told he was mafia when he wasn't

there's no universe where that isn't lying

[Cephrir]

if i sound upset about this, i dont really actually care, just.... if you're going to lie to the players, don't say in the queue that you aren't going to

[dramonic]

At least it wasn't a survivor!

[Ollie]

threads please???

[T S O]

Unlucky, Oliver.

[Drixx]

Firstly ... enough hate on Mastin and ZZZX. The early posts by Xombie were gutsy as hell in neighborhood. At one point he literally asked Mastin to investigate him,

knowing

she would get "not order", and then confessed before she said whether she had submitted it or not that he was "third party". I replaced into the game with a really narrow story to work with, and there was only one detail about what Xombie said that I had to change ... and ZZZX caught me on it. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't both publicly admitted it in the thread and pointed it out to him

and

made an explanation in the neighborhood, he would have undone me in an instant.

Mastin actually took a role and figured out how to massively multiply its power. If my slot had been town or an actual 3rd party lyncher, her plan was legit genius. Like ... all the hate isn't warranted. When I was talking about how she figured out a way to do extra spreading of the bees and not lose the bees spreading when investigating (since they were on her) ... that was legitimately true. That's why she died too ... I remember making the call that night, not even sure she would die and not ZZZX, because I didn't think there would be a later night when we could get the kill off on her without the possibility that she got saved and got the info to get one or more of us.

Also, because it should be said:

People really need to study third parties to know when you need to kill them or not

Guys. I hope you learned that you always lynch the claimed third party.

Bad theory. I suppose always lynching a 3rd party is safe, presuming that the lynch doesn't cost you the game later. Some third parties are useful to town, and some are included in games as a balancing measure that getting rid of can be ridiculously bad for town wincon. It's situational. If I really had been what I claimed, town would have won the game with the lock on Ollie. And the (slightly altered from original slot claim) claim I made is actually a role that exists and gets used.

What you just said, in a slightly different version of this game where I wasn't scum but was actually the role I claimed, would have ensured town defeat, all other things playing out the same.

btw, top scum hunting by Drixx here, it was a slip, I had no clue what Order was...

What's awful about that is that I viewed AP's role as a modified Serial Killer, and I knew I was scum and you weren't, so it was a great catch but I didn't consider at all that you might be the SK. I wanted the last day to go down differently and it's pure luck that I carried the long con to the win.

not lynching drixx when he claimed 3p was a really bad misstep. it wasn't prisoner's dilemma. you don't negotiate with non-town.

This 100%.

Never listen to anything mastin says.

Third party claims need to die before lylo.

Not because they could be scum fake-claiming, but because they could be third party... fake-claiming. Or at least fake-claiming that they can win with the town and whatnot. I mean, maybe you don't need to immediately lynch them, but you need to not let them get to lylo.

See above thoughts. In this case I was scum. Had I been what I claimed to be, I would have had a shared win with town and prevented the SK win. The idea of "Lynch neutrals no matter what" is pretty firm on this site, so I'm legitimately shocked that I could claim it publicly and carry it to the end, but there is also a need, for the sake of the game, to create compelling neutral/3rd/4th/self-aligned roles that add to the game instead of giving one person a really hard win condition to try.

Like ... the fact that a bunch of people can say "Always kill the neutral" and it would only be in edge cases that they would lose by doing so ... that's an indicator for that area of the game to be worked on. I've had an idea for a game kicking around in my head awhile that features an entire

faction

of neutrals.

It would have helped if there was a slot in this game that could answer questions about what was said in that neighborhood early game.

Unfortunately there was not.

Also, I don't put so much blame on the living players outside of ZZZX since this should have happened if anyone actually competent at the game was in ZZZX's position.

ZZZX actually caught the only thing in the neighborhood PT that would have busted me. I otherwise answered every question honestly. Whenever the thread links go up, you guys can see me tell Dram in the scum thread that I had to make myself believe I was what I was claiming before coming into the game to post, because from my perspective the path from Espeonage being killed to a scum win was basically impossible. I have slept on it and still can't believe I managed it.

The nasty posts towards Mastin and ZZZX should end.

- Mastin had a ridiculously good plan for amplifying her role. She had the misfortune of making one poor decision early, and the level of venom is not cool. As for ZZZX, he caught me. Straight up. He caught the place where I had to alter the original claim to try and make it to the end and I'm not sure if he was tired or if he just believed my explanation for why I thought Xombie had "lied by omission" ... but whichever it was, I expected to die. More's the pity too, because I'm almost certain Ollie would have won then, and that was brilliant SK work.


@Ollie - Yeah, we both shot Magua. I wanted to kill you actually, but I couldn't risk his vig mechanic being what it ended up being. That was one of those "impossible" decisions I talked to myself about.

@Skybird - That was probably the best town performance under ridiculous (and impossible to adequately quash or respond to) pressure that I've seen in a long time. The things I was saying were all legit things involved in spec and scum hunting. Your role provided a plausible foil to mine and you were dead on that I was using it as a smokescreen. You did great and shouldn't beat yourself up. I felt like I was navigating a mine field when interacting with you.


Some other general thoughts:

TSO's gambits were good. Wish he had been more invested as town.
Ooba's timing was perfect. That was the exact correct person to resurrect, and the follow up gambits allowing you to cop people were well executed.
Metal Sonic was on top of it ... most difficult person to interact with for fear I'd out myself.
Magua was great with a carpet bombing of obfuscation to try and get himself into the last day so if he was mislynched he could vig the right person.


I'm probably missing some people. This was a long game and a lot of people had really brilliant moments in it.

[vezokpiraka]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

@Drixx: Please send me a PM when you win a game where you didn't lynch the third party as town.

[Drixx]

Hasn't happened on site here, but it has happened on the site I migrated from. We had some different site meta there though. We also had some roles that I don't believe have ever appeared here. We'll have to change that.

I think what you're pointing out is that the current MS site meta and 3rd party usage need some work. As I said before, if I had actually been what I claimed, I would have brought the town victory along with myself.

But the fact that, in general, it's almost always the right idea to kill a neutral the moment you know he's neutral means that there's a fundamental flaw with how neutral roles work mechanically. Only edge cases can be made for why they shouldn't be policy lynched.

I'm a little confused by it, really, because there are a lot of brilliant people on this site, especially among the moderators and game creators ... I would expect the "Neutral = Policy Lynch" problem to have been tackled already. I guess I'll go see if there's a discussion thread on it in the theory forum, and if not make one to generate ideas on how to make neutral roles and mechanics healthy. In the current state of play, you are absolutely 100% right that a neutral should be Policy Lynched.

I mean ... it's bizarre to me that I managed to win, really. I knew the site culture was hostile to third parties, but I claimed in an attempt to get myself to the end game, and it somehow worked. But that's not even really the part that surprises me so much, because I can be very persuasive ... the amount of times I had thought about making certain plays but changed my mind, and if I had made those plays/kills it would have resulted in a loss; the probability against it playing out that way is probably something like 1 in 4^5 or so ... if my brain isn't malfunctioning.

By the way ... there's a lot I could say critical of some town players and some scum players ... but post game isn't about that, I don't think. People should be congratulated for the fact that they spent the last six months having fun with each other. Some people made some great plays. Even those who made mistakes should be treated with constructive criticism at most; most especially Mastin whose idea for amplifying her power was very good and I don't even blame her for trusting my slot. Xombie asked her to investigate him so that the neighborhood could trust each other, and then made the 3rd party gambit before she confirmed she was doing so.

There wasn't much I liked about Xombie's play when I replaced in, and I think he was either pressed for time or very unsure of how to play out his claim, but that one move he made was brilliant and gave me something to work with. For that I'll be looking to thank him when he gets back from his trip.

[Drixx]

In fact, I think this warrants it's own post. Mastin would probably have mechanically broken the game if not for having a scum in her neighborhood. If I had been a legit town leaning third party (interesting to me that the two actual 3rd party roles in game were both anti-town slanted), her plan almost certainly would have worked. It was well thought out. I felt legit depressed and upset when I recommended the scum team kill her on night 5. She didn't deserve it.

[mastin2]

Because no one else was blatantly lying about information they knew to not be true.

I did not lie.

When I said that Xombie was town D1, that was me being me and not even knowing everyone in the game was in a neighborhood; I thought it was just us three at the time I said that, and for me in a game where everyone isn't in a neighborhood and yet I am, I treat it as a masonry. (See also: Inu-Yasha, where this worked out VERY well.)

When I realized that everyone was in a neighborhood (something I didn't know when I replaced in), I changed my tune, and began re-wording things, setting up a situation where the

plan

was for me to, come D3 if I was lucky, have investigated both my neighbors and had their alignment revealed to me. (This didn't work only because of a combined misunderstanding of my role and ZX revealing his own role.)

This was what I was broadcasting D1. (So no, I didn't know they were town. In fact, I didn't even really think they were. I just figured that if they weren't scum, the scum would be weirded out, and if they were, then I could find them and explain the above.)
Mind you, contrary to what Drixx claimed, Xombie did NOT claim third party D1.
He didn't even claim it without pressure.
He claimed it under heavy, heavy pressure, D2, where I basically flat-out said that if he didn't claim, I wasn't going to continue defending him.
Also, with Xombie having let me live, as a claimed cop (because I claimed D1), and let ZX live, as a claimed protective, there was strong evidence that he was not scum.

After he claimed third party, I did everything I could to avoid saying Drixx was town, when I knew he wasn't. I didn't start to lie until ffery (I think it was her) caught it and called me out on the difference between ZZZX is 100% town (true), and Drixx is 100% not mafia (what I was firmly under the belief of thanks to our continued survival and seemingly groundbreaking plan), after which (to preserve the integrity of the plan) I may have done so once or twice but otherwise was trying to avoid the subject.

I had a plan. It never could have worked because Drixx was scum lying, but when the plan failed,

I was going to lynch Drixx

. I never said this in the neighborhood (because, duh, I'm not going to tell Drixx about it so he can think of a way around it), but it was fairly obvious. I was well aware that trusting blindly in a third party would be a bad idea--thus why I had that unspoken yet obvious failsafe. He shoots scum, and if he doesn't leave the game, he's lying scum. He doesn't shoot scum, he's lying scum. (The only problem was that in order to get there, I needed a guilty, which I never got. Aside from targeting Esp the night I died.) He was obviously scum the moment he started changing the facts, altering the claim and lying about the timing of it and whatnot...but he only started doing that AFTER I had died.

Also, saying my reads were crap is unfair when I was okay with shooting PV (a null read admittedly, but not a town one), targeted Esp thinking correctly he was scum, and correctly called Otolia scum and advocated for his lynch yet was ignored the entire time. (Yes I townread Bitmap D1, but

everyone

townread Bitmap D1.) And I seem to recall at many points thinking FT (prior to the vigging) might be scum, only to be shot down by Imperium.

No

, my reads were not great. I never seriously thought I was a scumhunting god. That was me, telling a JOKE, and CRUMBING, in a game about...y'know. GODS! That much should be obvious. Fair criticism is fair; I did defend Drixx harder than I should have, but most of my defense was actually spent on ZX, who I had every right to defend. So I'm not going to let you walk over me either; there's a difference between commenting on the weaknesses in my play and bashing it continuously.

[mastin2]

(Also, I'd like to point to another game where NOT lynching the claimed third party was the right decision: 4nxi3ty in Drawn on Arrival claimed survivor. I had a tracker pseudoclear on him that indicated he was at least partially being honest. If we had lynched him, he couldn't have won, and at least one if not two or three or more town players would have died. We didn't. Instead, we continued to scumhunt, and that game became a near-perfect win, for us and with 4nx winning too.)

[Drixx]

I'm not an idiot. I wasn't deviating one inch from the claim I inherited with Mastin alive to point it out.

[mastin2]

Link for the curious.

He claimed here.
We lynched the last scum that day instead of him, PeregrineV.

Two days later after the only mislynch in the game (which, just for the record, I was against), we lynched the backup serial killer.

[TheWayItEnds]

It would have helped if there was a slot in this game that could answer questions about what was said in that neighborhood early game.

Unfortunately there was not.

[Drixx]

My Role PM specifically states I can only use one ability each phase, and I have no night abilities (unless I could have torrented at night after achieving 10 Thunder Strike targets, which I guess makes sense). My understanding was that once I used Storm Call today, I would not be able to get 3 more marks out and use Storm Call again, since I can mark 2 per day and that would mean marking tomorrow and the next day phase ... and at that point I would not have been able to Storm Call and the game would be at end game.

dont you lose if u storm call incorrectly?

My Role PM specifically states I can only use one ability each phase, and I have no night abilities (unless I could have torrented at night after achieving 10 Thunder Strike targets, which I guess makes sense). My understanding was that once I used Storm Call today, I would not be able to get 3 more marks out and use Storm Call again, since I can mark 2 per day and that would mean marking tomorrow and the next day phase ... and at that point I would not have been able to Storm Call and the game would be at end game.

dont you lose if u storm call incorrectly?

My Card does not say I lose the ability once I use it. It simply requires three people alive who are Thunder Struck, and I cannot mark myself. The precise details, paraphrased so as not to get mod zapped: I must have at least 3 Thunder Strikes active to use the ability. The "Cost" is removal of all Thunder Strike marks.

The really crappy part is that there has been exactly one opportunity so far this game for me to win: Otolia's lynch, and I had a freaking town read on him. The early scum lynches came without the necessary charges and the other scum killed have been via vig shots.

lemme check PT but I remeber clearly that if you shoot town you just die and lose.

Gee ... if only there were someone in my neighborhood who was there to give the early information and out me as fake claiming. Hrm.

All the hate at Mastin and ZZZX is unwarranted, especially since I just quoted ZZZX outing me.

[mastin2]

Also,

dramonic:

Can you please make our PT public so that they can see where I came from?

(And for that matter, the dead PT, where I point out the timestamp issue.)

[Drixx]

Can we please stop with the "Hey let's take a shit on two people" parade? One of them came up with a brilliant way to maximize the mechanics and got betrayed by me, and the other one literally pointed out in the thread that I was lying and contradicting the original claim made by my slot. Like ... it's not their fault.

I played my cards well. Ollie played his cards well.

It was a long game, and I get that since only 5 people won, everyone else is disappointed ... but it's just toxic to be ugly about it afterward. You poison yourself when you are just bitter and blaming people. Instead, look for the good and compliment people on what they did well. If you want to point out some kind of place where someone can improve, do it constructively.

[T S O]

My view is, you should make one post-game vent post, and then drop it there.

I think mastin is taking a little too much flak. I think it would have helped if ZZZX had been able to, y'know, tell people that Xombie didn't actually claim d1, seeing as it was incredibly relevant, but what you see is what you get with

Lord Quotius Maximus

ZZZX.

[Ollie]

haha yeah all those quotes were annoying, there's my single vent post.

[Drixx]

Fair enough ... venting is venting ... but town didn't lose because of any single person. Literally nobody believed Ollie was scum except for ZZZX. I actually caught him but assumed it was not a scum slip because I mistakenly viewed Fenrir as a modified Serial Killer, so didn't expect an ACTUAL serial killer. I mean ... this could easily have been a solo win from Ollie.

My only issue with the venting is that it has all been aimed at two people, and unfairly so. That's all.

Who actually made the original assertion that I claimed on day one? I don't believe it was me. I think someone else said it first and I just didn't contradict it. When I replaced in the first thing I did was read Xombie's posts in neighborhood, so I was well aware of the timing. It was a monumental slip on my part if I was the first one to say the claim was on day 1. I don't think I did, but shit ... I was in the game for 3 and 1/2 months, so it's possible I guess.

[Skybird]

Good game scum team!

Thanks Drixx for your kind words.

That was a seriously long game. I started another game and was killed in it and replaced in to another game and was killed in that one all while this one was going on.

[Drixx]

Happy Scumday Skybird! I hope to see you in future games