An Hero...
An Hero...
Backstrom is the best center in the league!!
I believed your explanation once you finally gave it, it made sense .. then you suspected me for believing you!! Twice on that day I call out town as town and they both turned on me .. lol
No worries, the more you play the more you learn, just remember town is trying to find town too, not just look for scum.
No, Zack is correct. If you want a moderator to see something, you report it. Contacting the GM too is fine, but you should always report CoC violations so the moderators can handle it.
I also fail to see how reporting a post can be used as a means to gain an advantage gameplay-wise.
Last edited by lute; October 30th, 2016 at 09:08 AM. Reason: For some reason the quote didn't stick the first time :p
♫ Let it all burn down around us ♫
♫ Let the cruel consume the just ♫
♫ Let the sin we swim in drown us ♫
♫ Let the world shatter ♫
♫ Into dust ♫
♫ Nothing else matters ♫
♫ Only us ♫
Continuing what lute is saying, mods playing games don't look at reports and all matters are dealt with privately when possible and in consultation with game mods whenever action needs to be taken.
Scum player passively aggressively consistently attacks a town player that is on to them with unactionable posts that in isolation are not a rule violation, in an attempt to frustrate and upset said town player to the point of having an outburst, then report them. Here the moderators are disciplining the wrong player as the whole thing was a ploy. Imo, the GM is in the best position to determine what is happening within the game. Then it goes to the moderators through the GM.
All I am saying is any reports should come from the GM. The players should report to the GM, and the GM can make a decision to report to the moderators if need be.
The ploy is used by scum to both distract and discredit the town player.
if that's the ploy as scum, I'd rather not see it. you should be able to win without consistently insulting other users.Scum player passively aggressively consistently attacks a town player that is on to them with unactionable posts that in isolation are not a rule violation, in an attempt to frustrate and upset said town player to the point of having an outburst, then report them. Here the moderators are disciplining the wrong player as the whole thing was a ploy. Imo, the GM is in the best position to determine what is happening within the game. Then it goes to the moderators through the GM.
All I am saying is any reports should come from the GM. The players should report to the GM, and the GM can make a decision to report to the moderators if need be.
Yes I am offcially more annoying than navi. Misson accomplished. - Fable
i have deep seated lust for villager from animal crossing - Cory
The issue becomes, if you receive it you're almost guaranteed town cleared. Per instance if this game had another phase, whoever gets the bag is cleared as not being scum for no reason besides someone else diedYou had to die to lose the bag, so no.
Considering the powers are weak minor powers, and there are only four opportunities to use four different powers once each, its really weak.
Scum not having a special makes this weak role balanced imho.
The other half did, I was unsure.
I get that, it being a very weak special, that makes it balanced.
For example, a cop can clear three players by day 3, a very powerful role in comparison, but that is considered standard.
Btw, I had you guys townie for most of the game, didn't see your scummyness until the last day. Good work.
See post #4055 and #4056.
Scum player passively aggressively consistently attacks a town player that is on to them with unactionable posts that in isolation are not a rule violation, in an attempt to frustrate and upset said town player to the point of having an outburst, then report them. Here the moderators are disciplining the wrong player as the whole thing was a ploy. Imo, the GM is in the best position to determine what is happening within the game. Then it goes to the moderators through the GM.
All I am saying is any reports should come from the GM. The players should report to the GM, and the GM can make a decision to report to the moderators if need be.beyond "why the $%#! would anyone do this as a strategy"
what would even BE the gameplay benefit of this?
and why would the game mod be better equipped to handle it than the forum mods?
This, I'd never even thought of intentionally attacking town to tilt them in that wayif that's the ploy as scum, I'd rather not see it. you should be able to win without consistently insulting other users.Scum player passively aggressively consistently attacks a town player that is on to them with unactionable posts that in isolation are not a rule violation, in an attempt to frustrate and upset said town player to the point of having an outburst, then report them. Here the moderators are disciplining the wrong player as the whole thing was a ploy. Imo, the GM is in the best position to determine what is happening within the game. Then it goes to the moderators through the GM.
All I am saying is any reports should come from the GM. The players should report to the GM, and the GM can make a decision to report to the moderators if need be.
I uh... may or may not have done that on my homesite from time to time, heh heh heh
Well not by belittling, but by doing an action that upsets some players.
Like prematurely giving up. (Thesunfan knows, hee hee hee)
But yeah, I've learned myself that some emotion reads are not legit, if this is what Jerome is getting at.
Emotion reads, least my experience with them, is a hit or miss. Sometimes they're right, and sometimes the emotion read I get doesn't matter because they're still the role I was trying to determine.
Classic example (and why I keep mentioning thesunfan) was one game where he was wolfin' and I purposely said something to the extent of
"I $%#!ing don't want to play this game anymore. Town sucks yadda yadda yadda ect"
And he went OFF on it super hardcore.
...Turns out... he was a wolf anyways despite his genuine frustrating of me making a post like that.
I don't think you've ever come close to crossing the line on FFR
Eeeeeeeeh... I call people idiots all the time though on our homesite. Which is something I guess this site doesn't like? I like to attack players actions and make them all flustered with some minor name calling.
The bag only travels if the recipient dies so I fail to see how it is OP in the way Takhitty employed out this game... Also,I think no cop and no doc roles in the bag make it just fine balance-wise.The issue becomes, if you receive it you're almost guaranteed town cleared. Per instance if this game had another phase, whoever gets the bag is cleared as not being scum for no reason besides someone else diedYou had to die to lose the bag, so no.
Considering the powers are weak minor powers, and there are only four opportunities to use four different powers once each, its really weak.
Scum not having a special makes this weak role balanced imho.
"Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica."
-Jim Halpert
Your team used the passive aggressive strategy. 'are you even reading the game', refusing to explain something and then banging on with a lie about the explanation .. maligning other players, not to their face, but to other players, and in lists of reads .. other stuff too.
Not that I think this is illegitimate gameplay, but it is nasty, just not overt and in your face.
This is why the forum should be careful about moderating gameplay. If a couple of aggressive posts in a row can be moderated, then dozens of passive aggressive cumulatively nasty posts over pages should be too.
Again, I am just advocating for the GM to be the first method of complaint, the one in charge of the game, the one with the most understandings of the dynamics.
i haven't read the game outside of a bit of the last day so it is possible i am picturing something different than what you are referring to, but i don't see the problem with/what is "nasty"/"passive aggressive" about any of that.Your team used the passive aggressive strategy. 'are you even reading the game', refusing to explain something and then banging on with a lie about the explanation .. maligning other players, not to their face, but to other players, and in lists of reads .. other stuff too.
Not that I think this is illegitimate gameplay, but it is nasty, just not overt and in your face.
This is why the forum should be careful about moderating gameplay. If a couple of aggressive posts in a row can be moderated, then dozens of passive aggressive cumulatively nasty posts over pages should be too.
What is the point of moderation?
The point of moderation is to be able to keep the environment in the game and on the site as friendly as possible, and to defuse arguments before they blow up. I'd say that pretty much 100% of the time the mod who does the moderating has no clue about the players' alignments in the game, so they stand on neutral ground.
Also you should know that before any moderating happens the mod will have gone through and checked to see if the blowout is provoked or not.
Right, and some behaviors effect some players in different ways.
Now if its two scum players poking at each other to create fake conflict, the GM would know this...
Difficult and subjective.
I am all in favor of moderation, I fully agree with the forum's standards, the only suggestion I am making is that it go through the GM first, that is all.
Bottom line is that regardless of alignment people should stick to the COC. There's nothing a game mod could do that would prevent a mod reaction to something that's crossing the line there. I don't know how a "Cool off" message from a mod would be revealing for alignment one way or the other if it happens regardless if the arguing happens between two villas, two scums or one of each.Right, and some behaviors effect some players in different ways.
Now if its two scum players poking at each other to create fake conflict, the GM would know this...
Difficult and subjective.
I am all in favor of moderation, I fully agree with the forum's standards, the only suggestion I am making is that it go through the GM first, that is all.
I fail to see how that's passive aggressive...Your team used the passive aggressive strategy. 'are you even reading the game', refusing to explain something and then banging on with a lie about the explanation .. maligning other players, not to their face, but to other players, and in lists of reads .. other stuff too.
Not that I think this is illegitimate gameplay, but it is nasty, just not overt and in your face.
This is why the forum should be careful about moderating gameplay. If a couple of aggressive posts in a row can be moderated, then dozens of passive aggressive cumulatively nasty posts over pages should be too.
In the interest of attempting to drag this thread back into both positivity and talking about the game itself (although I'm not saying that the current discussion is unimportant) does anyone have any positive feedback and/or constructive criticism for the other players? I'm sure everyone here wants to improve from game to game, so if people could offer opinions on what other players should keep doing/ might want to change, that would be useful for everyone. Unfortunately, I suck, so I don't feel I can give out much feedback (Other than good job mafia for hiding, AAF especially dropped off of most people's radars pretty fast), but maybe someone else can?
I'm gonna have to go with Jerome on this one about who should be moderating out of line play.
I can't imagine the amount of salt that would suddenly happen if a moderator outside the game that has no clue about the current happenings to... well... moderate players. Once upon a time on my homesite, that exactly happened in one of our TWGs.
...The end result was a premature ending of someone's game because outside mods decided that the post in question was overly offensive. When in reality, it was just a simple passive-aggressive prod that was never meant to offend the person at a personal level.
...The mod that made this call was then trashed talked into eventually just leaving the site because of all the negative feedback they were getting from both players and non-players (where my homesite doesn't play TWG) alike.
...
I mean, I clearly understand what you guys are driving at. I think all actions however are to be made by the GM and GM only.
Oh, erm... you were part of the Bad hydra, right? It stinks because I don't know what you could've done differently since your game was pretty short.
Were you the one that was accusing me of my tone, just by the way? If not, I think you did a pretty decent job at attacking other points than just my tone that the other head was doing.
...I'm also curious what I could improve on. I feel like I played a decent game regardless of what was presented and the outcome.
I was the one who thought you were town, not the one accusing you. I have to say though, good job on not getting completely sucked down to the level of trash talking that some of the others did. You were a little overly angry at times, but you kept your head and at least tried to find the mafia.
The biggest mistake town makes is to forget to find town, and to forget other town are trying to find them.
Also, being wrong doesn't mean a player is scum.
Sounds like a true difference of experience.
I've probably been on... mmmm about 10 sites where they play mafia, on none of them do the game host deal with sitewide behavioral enforcement unless they are a sitewide moderator as well.
They can report problematic posts, modkill players, etc, and on this site, we have a feature where the game host can mute any player at will, forcibly sub out the slot, and so on...
But, because most people who host games are not moderators, are not trained how to handle behavioral issues, and many of them do not actually wish to, a fully trained team of people willing to step in and call things down the middle as much as possible has been preferable, both here and on every other site I've been to.
There are potential issues with the approach, but it has worked out well for the most part on my home forum since 2006. Also on every well-run site I've seen.
I have not seen your approach before, so I cannot say if it would be better. I will say, however, there's a lot of game hosts who want no part of behavioral moderation tasks, and already have their hands full with the actual hosting and playing of games. So, I think the approach you're talking about would not be one size fits all- I don't think it would work out well here, in my opinion, due to the size of the site and the number of people who want to host games but do not want moderator responsibilities.
As it happens, it's difficult to find enough moderators as it is. There's not enough to go around to host every game.
Not much off the top of my head, you were exposing yourself as town early, it was recognized. It was only later when you were in the whirlwind of competing town claims, one of which was a town liar, and competing town bandwagons that you looked dirty, but that wasn't your fault, imo, that was circumstance.
I guess you could have been more investigative of the previous days after flips. This is something town often neglects, looking back at interactions from previous days with known alignments and motivations.
Well, I can see a need for an outside mod if the person in question becomes EXTREMELY hostile to everyone. Yeah, I can see outside intervention then.
I don't know, maybe there's a protocol moderators here follow where they don't jump the gun and pull the trigger on doing an action on someone without context (because the example I did was exactly that, lol). I certainly hope so, heh.
Hosting, GMing a game is moderating the game. As you listed, they have tools available to moderate their game. Private warnings, public warnings, God kill, substitution ... any number of things.
There's definitely a process behind the moderating done here on the site, and it's more like coaching than straight up moderating. Before any infractions or band or any other things happening to players in games there's a whole lot of consideration taking place.
The only thing that might happen quite quickly in a game is a post that says to cool off and that moderators will look at things with possible actions to follow. Otherwise we try to stay hands off as much as possible.
I also say the forum is very well moderated, there is nothing wrong with that. Its a great balance with a universal well defined purpose. You might think a German ran the site it so well run.
Just in game it should start with the GM is all.
I certainly share Pizza's experience in this regard, having also been on many different sites. Hosts very rarely want to or even think to moderate behavior in their games. And many hosts also aren't equipped to do this, and it could even become a problem if there are different standards of behavioral modding in every game that players play on a certain site, it'll be difficult to consistently know where the line is, which is important for building a lasting community that can get along with each other and knows the boundaries of the game and the boundaries of the other players. Add to that the frustrations caused by hosts making bad calls on how to moderate behavior.
This is not to say that it's always inappropriate for game hosts to moderate behavior, especially not when it's just public warnings. But they should first and foremost focus on ensuring game integrity over all else, and that is why they have the tools at their disposal that they have. Related to this, it can even often be awkward for a game host to have to personally coach someone in their game on how to behave, since they are then a host affecting how a player in their game - whose role they know - is playing the game. This problem is avoided with a moderator, who doesn't know anyone's roles and is purely looking at behavior, stepping in and dealing with it.
The actual moderator team confer with each other, make sure to look into the context and the player's history and have a system and guidelines for how they do things. This ensures that everyone always know what to expect in each game. And probably MOST importantly, it ensures that issues are ALWAYS dealt with.
The number of people who've quit this site because they felt there wasn't any moderation far exceeds the number of players that have or will ever leave the site because they dislike moderators giving public warnings about toning it down or private coaching on how to follow the CoC.
Last edited by Thingyman; October 30th, 2016 at 07:32 PM.
Because of our different systems and experiences, we end up with different general meanings for things.
On here-
Hosting/GMing = setting up a game, designing it, randing it, running it. Dealing with modkills/substitutions as needed, reporting problematic posts if they see them, muting players until the decide what to do with the slot. The only thing they can do is mute or remove a player, they cannot deal out site penalties, nor do they have staff access.
Moderating = when a player is getting out of line according to our code of conduct, they're given a private coaching, or a moderator instruction, on how to improve that behavior. They get site-related warnings and infractions if they are especially out of line. If they break the site rules or cheat, or have a history of flaking from games, Site moderators enforce things like short involuntary breaks, temp bans, permabans, penalty boxing (can post on the site, but not sign up or play games).
Game hosts and GMs don't have access to that on here, and because they may only want to host one game here or there, may not be well versed in what kind of moderation needs to be done. They also, as mentioned, often have their hands full with their hosting tasks. Especially the larger, more complicated games like mashes.
Last edited by Askthepizzaguy; October 30th, 2016 at 07:28 PM.
In our fora we have auto-censors in place that are usually over-restrictive. There are moments when a curseword or two can be highly effective. Telling everyone they're a $%#!ing this and a $%#!ing that only annoys people. You can annoy other players enough that they ask for replacements. You can annoy the GM enough that he or she doesn't really care about the game and makes mistakes; doing the updates and reconfiguring the Modbot every time someone died was quite the chore and it never took me less than 20 minutes. Why be foul-mouthed, why be aggressive?
Saw it. Yay.
You're welcome!
Apology accepted, Sunfan-san.
*More than one definition of the word 'highest' may apply.
Hmmmm.
- Hydra games are never, ever, the usual stuff, by definition.
- Mixed-forum/cross-forum events aren't the usual stuff, by definition, either.
- People's behaviour:
- What Glore did is not usual, either. I think they've learned their lesson of why metagaming is BAD with a capital b and why faking claims isn't done. Let's leave it at that for now.
- People posting phallic imagery is also not usual. Gnome were silenced for it, but they were all but lynched at that point, a few minutes before the phase ended.
- The level of shrill aggression ($%#!ing dumb dis, dude, $%#!ing dumb, can't you see it?) that blossomed around midgame is not usual.
- Also, the posting rate was a bit higher than that which I am used to.
- Yet again, I'm not the most usual of hosts. I come up with weird roles (run past several checks here for balance), once I gave the mafia a vengeful lynchee to make up for the town having a vigilante, once I made most of the players be survivors (it was a Zombie game), etc. etc. I want players to have fun and, if possible, roleplay, instead of just having a bunch of people do analysis of voting patterns.
All in all, come again, play a quieter game and see how it turns out.
Ummm... If I were a mod, I'd have no problem with it. Most of them were unused, though.
Mechanically? I nerfed the original powers you get (there would even be outright protection and so on in larger games), and counterbalanced it with six heads thinking together.
Maybe I could do a brief summary on how magic bag games are supposed to do, where they came from, and so on? It might deserve a thread of its own for theoretical mafia development, of course.
Given that it's a generic role PM that explicitly states other PMs might come, sending them all one by one is an unnecessary waste of time, and would have been even without a few of you bugging me to start the game already while if the starting time for the game had been announced weeks beforehand.
The PM was clear enough, the OP and rules were clear enough. People did ask me questions about the game such as what roles there were, how many mafia there were and so on even if I had already told them the game setup was a closed (non-public) one.
I'm quite the neutral little bugger when I have to be, and I can temporarily silence people, but I don't have the access to hydra accounts to see if anything's being done out of place and, for example, didn't have any way to change the composition of the Flops/Cap hydra myself.
Also, the mods don't have any emotional investment in the game. I tried to read every post, but at points I just skimmed through hundreds of posts made in my absence while I was away dealing with Real Life. The mods are supposed to have more time.
Very well played by the scum.
Thanks to Tak for hosting and to Dp101 for being an excellent partner.
Well done to those townies who kept their heads.
Yeah, as with our mislynch, that was my doing entirely.
I refer you to my comment upon agreeing to hydra with Dp:
Nah, no problems. Though I will say, even though it was just D1 stuff, I don't believe tone is a good way to go after someone most of the time, hee hee hee.
Sorry for smacking ya, as it were. Did not mean to sound like a total $%#! there if you felt that way.
No offence taken. I didn't really understand what you were trying to do in the game, but I could tell there was a sharp mind behind it, which made me suspicious of your motives.
But, hey, another game, another $%#!ty read. If I was going to let constant failure put me off I'd have given up long ago.
Or killed Flanders.
Have any of the other mafia teams have flawless victories in this thing so far?
i'd call game 5 a practically flawless victory with a bit of a flub at the end, if i'm remembering the right game because loltown
Did I miss this, Takhitty?Before I forget, thanks to @Sooh, @Soulmaster, @Fable and @dyachei for agreeing to be replacements (Sooh never got used, but only because I gave priority to existing hydras and thought I could replace one head)
@PR. I'll see your PM tomorrow, thanks!
I will come back tomorrow if anyone has any questions, e.g.:
Takhitty,
Any chance you're working up that analysis of the analysis in the graveyard thread yet?
"Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica."
-Jim Halpert
No, I've just had a busy week.
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Originally Posted by Askthepizzaguy
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