General activity in mafia games

[Skoffin]

We have been having trouble with activity for some time and it seems to have gotten worse lately so I am making this topic to discuss it and see if there is a way we can boost activity around here. Incredibly I am one of the most active players around here, and anyone from around a decade ago would find that hilarious as back in the day there was a time where submarining/scumarining was called Skoffmarining.

Ultimately we need new players around here but that is another issue to deal with, for now we need to get our current playerbase active again.

First thing we need to understand is why people go inactive or lurk in the first place.
My personal theory is that some people 'lurk' because they lack the confidence to real speak up and give opinions, and don't want to risk 'being wrong' and looking stupid. If anyone has their own theory, go ahead and share.
If those that do lurk can give their reasons why that too would be helpful.

As for how to deal with activity, no fucking idea. Here are some ideas anyway:

1. We could have a thread where we have 2-3 tiers categorising players from high tier to low tier, best players at the top and weakest/lurkiest down the bottom. It might drive players to want to get to the top/stay at the top and boost their activity and maybe drive the bottom players to participate more to get out of the bottom tier; orrr we might upset some of the people who get left down there. idk

2. We could have literal Participation Trophies. whoowhoo! Aside from being a joke on those participation trophies all of us millennials apparently got, periodically we could hand out a trophy or other prize to the player we designate as having participated/contributed the most to games. Everyone likes achievements.
I don't know if the site would allow us to hand out actual trophies for profiles so it would be more figurative and named in our section of the forums, but I might also give out other stuff like steam games or shit.

3. We start penalising players that sign up to games but lurk throughout them until they cut that shit out.

4. We impose stricter rules about posting, such as minimum one post a day or whatever.

5. With every vote count we also include a tally of when each player last posted, to better keep track of activity per player. Players that routinely don't post for 3 days straigh for example get penalties or booted. Whatever.

Discuss.

[dakky21]

First, not all of us are native English speakers (or writers). For example, I need to write a post and then re-read it 3 times to check if it "means" what I meant. I can easily get trapped in my own words because they say something what I didn't mean or didn't meant to say and therefore lurking is easier than active posting.

As for activity, I would suggest a spreadsheet of players with activity and inactivity marks - for example when you get 3 deadbeat marks, you're banned from joining games for x months. Clear rules to be set in place, for example deadbeating would mean not being able to post at least once each three days and similar.

[DoomYoshi]

I'm just too ashamed to post at all after my last loss.

[BuJaber]

Don't really have anything to say about the activity of current players. The suggestions put forth may work or may fail completely or may even make things worse but without trying I don't think we'll know.


However if we have any hope of bringing in more players we HAVE to be more understanding and sensitive to the newbies. Gotta explain to them what they did wrong when they do wrong and give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Also we need to break out of the meta every once in a while. Sure one or two games may be lost (or won but not efficiently) along the way, but the game should be fun anyway it shouldn't be about just winning at all costs and it should be worth it in the long term if we actually manage to keep new players instead of pushing them out.

How we bring in more players I have no idea but official CC announcements for official games would probably be a start.

[IcePack]

Noob games were experienced players must go out and find themselves an inexperienced partner. The inexperienced players “play” and the experienced players coach the new guys via pm.

Like an apprentice game, where coach never posts but only helps the new guy play and understand what’s going on and maybe formulate arguments and defenses (while explaining). Coach and player both win prizes. After awhile experienced guys can become sought after as the coach as new guys enter the scene as good / successful trainers.

Helps keep coaches active, helps integrate new players, helps eventually expand the pool of new guys, and keeps the cutthroat experienced guys away from the noobs until they are more established players who have a little experience / guidance under their belts.

Apprentices can continue to play apprentice games until they win or a coach graduates them etc

These would be more standard style then non standard and aim towards teaching them foundational skills to be a player on their own. Also gets existing mafia players to go recruit potential new people to the area

[Dukasaur]

I think you need new blood in here. That just means people have to go out and spread the word and invite their friends to come and play here. Of every group the vast majority will do very little. If you need 20 active players that means you need 200 players overall, and to do that you are quite honestly going to have to do some shameless recruiting.

Don't look at me. I tried Mafia a few times; did not enjoy it at all. I'm definitely not the droid you're looking for. However, if there was some leadership here and somebody with new ideas to attract players, I would support them. It's part of my mandate in running the Community department. The position of Moderator for this forum is vacant. I would gladly entertain an application from someone who wanted to be moderator here, but more than moderator, it needs to be an aggressive go-getter. Somebody who will blow the Mafia trumpet loud and clear and grab their friends by the short hairs and drag them in here dead or alive.

We have 5000 credits per calendar quarter allocated for Official Mafia Games. Last quarter that prize went unclaimed. Even with 5000 credits on the line, nobody seemed to be able to get their shit together long enough to launch an Official Mafia Game. If you think those credits would do a better job being re-allocated to something else, some kind of recruitment program, I'm sure we could talk about that. But first, some kind of Messiah has to rise from among you and set out to get the ball rolling.

[TeeGee]

i've played a couple of games, but personal commitment stop me getting heavily involved in mafia games.
I can help promote games, I can also add to the prize pool.
I can give away a load of conquer stars to anyone who joins and bonus stars to anyone who brings in someone new or have Conquer credits issued, although i would have to check with the community team to make sure I am not stepping on their toes here
We can also make announcement threads and headlines so any new game starting appears on the front page and on the CC menu.
All I need is for the game organizer to contact me with what they want and I will see what i can do to make it happen.

Fastposted by Duka

[Dukasaur]

i've played a couple of games, but personal commitment stop me getting heavily involved in mafia games.
I can help promote games, I can also add to the prize pool.
I can give away a load of conquer stars to anyone who joins and bonus stars to anyone who brings in someone new or have Conquer credits issued, although i would have to check with the community team to make sure I am not stepping on their toes here
We can also make announcement threads and headlines so any new game starting appears on the front page and on the CC menu.
All I need is for the game organizer to contact me with what they want and I will see what i can do to make it happen.

Fastposted by Duka

Definitely not stepping on my toes. The more help the merrier!

[dakky21]

The thing is - people aren't here for CC games but for mafia games, CC is just play along, so credits and stuff don't mean much to the most players.. That's the main problem...

[lord voldemort]

I think something I have noticed is that the culture is very unfriendly towards new players. And that makes players unwilling to post anything for fear of being wrong and having their throats jumped down. Perfect example was ice pack in my hobbit game was thrown under the bus because he is sort of new and only posted once every 2 or 3 days and was harassed for it. Leading him to quit the game. That should never happen.
Having said that. A blacklist system that is universal should be put in place.

[aage]

The guys with the fancy titles have the right of it. There aren't enough players to be setting standards for player activity "or else"-style.

As for why people lurk, I can only speak for myself. I will happily lurk for a few days when I'm waiting for specific people to either respond to or ignore a post I made, and there's plenty of occasions where I simply don't have anything to add to my most recent post, or don't want to distract from what I think is a more important point brought up by someone else. I also simply prefer the style of exercising patience for a while, playing passively or autopilot, and then pouncing on a suspect.
In my experience, when a game grinds to a halt (during early days) it's because nobody has anything to add which they consider relevant. Past day one that rarely occurs, though sometimes it happens when the "active core" of the game has been killed and the people left alive can't be bothered. That's unfortunately a legit strategy for scum nowadays.
Forcing players to post every day seems a little too oppressive, people are allowed to have a life imo. Rewarding players for high activity levels is a little pointless - the game is its own reward and being active increases your odds of winning. I think reviewing the game when it's done, calling out lurkers and giving the GM of new games free reign to deny those people from joining their game is the best way to go. Just don't go full fascist with it, players often have very legitimate reasons for not posting for a while.


fp by voldy and dakky
Regarding the credits, I don't care for them, I think I've gotten MVP that came along with X months of cc premium once, which i used to play a grand total of 0 cc games with. But if we were to recruit more players on this site it'd be a good incentive.
Regarding new players, I have no idea what would be the best way of integrating people who are new to this player group or this game (or both). Of course people will lynch 'worse' players at some point because they simply dig a hole for themselves, or they're too hard to read because don't post enough, or they simply get framed by scum cause new people are easier to frame. The coaching stuff sounds great on paper but I don't think it accomplishes anything in practice.

[Skoffin]

Activity award wasn't as literal as that
But we do have some players who seem to just lurk every game and others who screw around in games, we should consider some penalty for it - if not outright blacklisting them, at least give other players preferential treatment in signups. ie They can sign up for games still but they will be put as reserves if other players are available.
Sorry to say but I'm starting to be put off playing with certain people and I am considering no longer playing games they are in until they shape up.

We do need to be friendlier to new players - we have already put off a few people. Fine and dandy to go hard on long-time players that should know better. Mods should speak up if players are being too rude/aggressive towards new players that come here.
We might want to try the idea of coaches, it's better then continuing to do nothing. Alternatively we have newbie games where it's mostly full of less experiences players and only let in 2 or so experienced players at most.


As for credits - I've been after some of those but they keep going to people that don't want them apparently

Anyway, I think some of us do take games far too serious and it can lead to people getting salty or others lurking to not step on any toes. I personally would like to see a few more non-srs/silly games around here every so often where people can play around but not stress so much about 'being right' that they avoid posting oir trying new strategies. We need more whacky games.

[dakky21]

We need more whacky games.

I have an idea, sorry for the color removal and if you will listen, maybe we can co-host one.

[dakky21]

Well, what the hell, I'll say it right here since it doesn't involves anything important except the setup itself.

Make a Double elimination tournament game. I mean: 16 start. Whoever gets lynched/killed, goes to the second pot. When it's 8 alive and 8 dead, second pot is another game and continues while the main game still goes on. Whoever wins in the main game joins the second game with their roles changed or same, depending on the numbers of town/scum. Simple as that.

That means newbies can try their strategies twice and not be afraid of getting killed for the first time.

[Samlen]

I think the biggest problem is the lack of new players stimulating the community because there's not a good way to integrate them. Or rather, there haven't been many noob friendly games and the community has been throwing new players through the grinder. I like the idea of coaching games, but we could just as easily just have a simple game where only newer players can join with a minimum amount of suggestions from the moderator of the game so that they can get a feel of the game themselves. Spreading the word would be great and all but I wouldn't be surprised if we've had a couple of interested players visit the mafia forums, but leave purely because all the current games look too complicated.

[IcePack]

Newbie games with all newbies don’t help integrate new players with old ones. Once they get out of newbie only they will still get best to death by the experienced guys.

Hence the coaching actually helps the new players learn to play games here on CC mafia and also have both their actions and others explained to them so they understand future actions by aggressive people. Not just oh this guys an idiot but oh he’s doing this potentially because _____.

You not only get game experience but start to understand some basic strategy and thought processes required in order to play

[Metsfanmax]

I think you need new blood in here. That just means people have to go out and spread the word and invite their friends to come and play here. Of every group the vast majority will do very little. If you need 20 active players that means you need 200 players overall, and to do that you are quite honestly going to have to do some shameless recruiting.

Don't look at me. I tried Mafia a few times; did not enjoy it at all. I'm definitely not the droid you're looking for. However, if there was some leadership here and somebody with new ideas to attract players, I would support them. It's part of my mandate in running the Community department. The position of Moderator for this forum is vacant. I would gladly entertain an application from someone who wanted to be moderator here, but more than moderator, it needs to be an aggressive go-getter. Somebody who will blow the Mafia trumpet loud and clear and grab their friends by the short hairs and drag them in here dead or alive.

We have 5000 credits per calendar quarter allocated for Official Mafia Games. Last quarter that prize went unclaimed. Even with 5000 credits on the line, nobody seemed to be able to get their shit together long enough to launch an Official Mafia Game. If you think those credits would do a better job being re-allocated to something else, some kind of recruitment program, I'm sure we could talk about that. But first, some kind of Messiah has to rise from among you and set out to get the ball rolling.

Just a comment on the official mafia games -- lovo's Hobbit mafia was originally supposed to be the mafia game for the last quarter, but it got started way too late. I think it's appropriate for it to be awarded the credits if it completes by the end of this quarter.

[DirtyDishSoap]

I think it's horse shit if someone fails to respond in numerous games, and just becomes a notorious lurker. *coughDJFiresideHotshotcough*

I can understand if one or two games every now and again where life kicks you in the cooter and you can't be nearly as active, but when it becomes EVERY CONSECUTIVE GAME with almost no activity to begin with, it begs the question of why sign up in the first place? It's bullshit, and a waste of everyone else's time that wants to enjoy the game. So there's that part of the problem.

The 2nd issue is, are hosts afraid of black listing players? Of the aforementioned lurkers, I have yet to see anyone other than myself blacklist a player. I know there's players among us that wish others around here wished to bar others from playing for x reasons, all for legitimate reasons, but never followed through. Whether it's the lurking, being toxic, lack of experience, total lack of learning, adaptability, so on and so forth. I encourage the black list if it keeps the trolls or completely inactive players out, I'm tired of seeing someone constantly replaced or called out for the lurking when it becomes a God damn theme for them.

Speaking of toxic, the community we have has the "elitist" or what I like to call, "The Old Guard" mentality. Usually piss poor players that are not that great at the game to begin with take the easy route to pick on a newer player as to deflect poor play to begin with, but folks are so high strung on the new guy, they rarely notice it. I think driving Icepack out was total fucking bullshit, and he's not all bad of a player.

I think my last closing argument is that, myself included, needs to stop defending players like Mitch, who's main scum tells is if he role reveals day 1 or not. Like, wtf? I've been playing nearly a year with y'all and this hasn't changed. On one hand, yeah, I kind of get why folks don't exactly go after Mitch hardcore for x amount of reasons, or the fact that we have a small community (due to the elitism I believe), but anyone with an IQ above room temperature will tell you that the reveals on Days 1 with no pressure is terrible, or following one player for guidance is terrible play, or acting confused and saying "Oh dur! Where do we go from here fellas!?" is filler/fluff. Of all these listed reasons for someone to get lynched immediately, it's just a pass for "Oh, he does that all the time, no worries!". I think the only person here among us who can tell if Mitch is scum is Skoffin, other than that, we just shoot blindly in the dark and hope for the best.

I'm no saint when it comes to this game, I'm not going to claim perfection either. I have my moments of herpaderp stupidity, or being a hot head, but Christ, I don't bash people for being new, I bash them for being stupid or having a stupid play, as anyone else here should.