The Mafia Discussion Thread

[Gongsun Zan]

I'm not a fan of, "Hey look, I got 40 signups, so I'm going to have 40 roles". If you can come up with 40 decent roles, go ahead, but when you start coming up with roles on the fly, I'm willing to bet a good deal of them end up sucking, especially when it comes to first time hosts. And let's not even take game balance into count.

[Pesci]

The different sizes thing may be a good idea. I'm in favour of trying that. Anything other than the current system, to be fair, though I'm gonna keep calling for the waiting list to go all together unless this is a great success.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Short memory then Pesci? The reason we added the waiting list was to stop people holding off their games until there weren't signups for a whole bunch more continually being pushed back by people who weren't so respectful.

[TEOL]

Well for starters, I think that we need to look at who wants to run a game, the desired size they want for the game, and then decide on things from there. Example being:

Let's say I wanted to do Webcomic Mafia IV at some point. First of all, every Webcom Mafia sequel was able to top its predecessor's player list size, so we'd be looking at a game nearing 40 people involved if it kept that tradition. Webcom Mafia has become a staple series of the Game Cube so a lot of people would be interested, chances are we'd see a huge game with a lot of people wanting to play.

Obviously, this is going to be a large game and would also want to get started when everything was ready. Typically, very few people would object to something like that happening.

Now, let's say that a person who hasn't ran a mafia game before comes up with a concept everyone loves, joins in on, and because he gave the option for it he now has a game almost the same size as, say, Webcom IV would (presumably) be. The question is, if we stick to only one large game running at once, what happens then? Does one of the two games get chosen to either A) Run first, or B) Reduce their player size, or C) Do they both get to run anyway because their sign-ups are finished?

We need to have a system, sure, but it needs flexibility. People will have ideas that people love, we need to judge not only the people involved, but the ideas behind the game and the person running it. We need to be able to say "Okay, even though we already have a large game going, it's obvious that this game not only needs to be large, but its game runner is capable of handling it. Since they were given the chance to start sign-ups, they deserve to be given the chance."

I say, basically, we TRY to maintain the system.. but if sign-ups go up for a game and the game gets more players then expected, I honestly don't see the merit in punishing the game runner for having a more popular idea than they expected. It's going to be on them to decide if they want to work with all the people who signed up, or if they're going to make cuts. I think it should stay that way.

All of that's true under the current system, though.

[Pesci]

Short memory then Pesci? The reason we added the waiting list was to stop people holding off their games until there weren't signups for a whole bunch more continually being pushed back by people who weren't so respectful.

...and the game cap doesn't solve that?

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Not on its own, no. Then it just becomes a race to see who can get sign-ups open the fastest.

[Pesci]

And what's wrong with that?

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Somebody could want to run a game for weeks/months, but because they're Sean or Zan or someone and not on EWB every waking moment like FD or myself, they'd never get to.

[Pesci]

And that's entirely my problem with the waiting list. Somebody who's 30th on the list would stand a much better chance if it wasn't there. Games that take 4 or 5 months to end don't exactly help either.

[FireDoughnut]

Somebody could want to run a game for weeks/months, but because they're Sean or Zan or someone and not on EWB every waking moment like FD or myself, they'd never get to.

I am not on it that much...

[-A-]

And that's entirely my problem with the waiting list. Somebody who's 30th on the list would stand a much better chance if it wasn't there. Games that take 4 or 5 months to end don't exactly help either.

Yeah, but why is giving everyone a chance to immediately open their game a fair system? If you have people racing to open their game when one finishes, it's not good for the people playing them. The waiting list has two advantages on that front - RW can promote people who finish their games (or run good ones); and the fact that you have to wait will stop people getting an idea and then immediately being able to run it, but later finding they don't want to stick with it.

It's true that the list ballooned to massive proportions, but we've already seen that some people will lose interest in the games they registered and dropped out. That's a good process that wouldn't exist if those games could've started up on short notice. Added to that, there was obviously a bit of a rush when the list was first created that led to it getting to 35 games. That's now dropping, taking the list to a more reasonable size.

If we do break the list down into big, medium and small games (which is a great idea, I think) then the list will be even more manageable and it'll give people an incentive to make smaller (and therefore shorter-running) games. That will mean we can get through more games and hopefully reduce the number that tail off into inactivity.

[Pesci]

And that's entirely my problem with the waiting list. Somebody who's 30th on the list would stand a much better chance if it wasn't there. Games that take 4 or 5 months to end don't exactly help either.

Yeah, but why is giving everyone a chance to immediately open their game a fair system?

That's like asking why red is a primary colour

If you have people racing to open their game when one finishes, it's not good for the people playing them.

Why? What's wrong with sign-up threads going up quickly?

The waiting list has two advantages on that front - RW can promote people who finish their games (or run good ones);

So people who sign up can essentially be messed around in favour of those with good reputations? There's no evidence to say that somebody like Sousa would run a better game than somebody like me. If people get to skip the queue, I don't see much point in a queue at all.

and the fact that you have to wait will stop people getting an idea and then immediately being able to run it, but later finding they don't want to stick with it.

And how many times have we seen Mafias making their way to the top of the queue and failing to get the sign-up thread up in a reasonable amount of time? I don't see any proof that the waiting list encourages people to plan their Mafias better, or that somebody who is 5th on the list when somebody else signs up in 25th place will be in a better position to run a game by the time it's their turn. I don't see why people who think of an awesome Mafia idea and plan it all out intricately and get super exited but only really have the time to run it in the summer (let's say when they're on a break from school) should be condemned to either running their game in autumn when they can't dedicate the right amount of time to it or not running it at all, or waiting a whole year to run it the next summer when they probably couldn't care less. Meanwhile some slacker could be 1st on the list and hasn't even thought things through at all, so it goes to 2nd place, only they haven't been seen on EWB for weeks, so 3rd place gets a go and all the while 1st and 2nd stay at the top until they finally get their shit together while our aforementioned guy in 25th could be in a better position and doesn't get to run their game because they didn't think of the idea four months earlier. As I said before, being above somebody else on the waiting list doesn't mean you'll be any more ready than they are when the next spot opens up and that's why the list fails. We don't all work at the same rate and with the same enthusiasm

If we do break the list down into big, medium and small games (which is a great idea, I think) then the list will be even more manageable and it'll give people an incentive to make smaller (and therefore shorter-running) games. That will mean we can get through more games and hopefully reduce the number that tail off into inactivity.

That's why I said I'm willing to give this a chance and if it isn't a great success it's not going to change my opinion. Somehow I can't see things working out that conveniently, but you know. It's a start.

Edited November 22, 2008 by Pesci

[oldskool]

So what do you recommend so we don't have a million games going at once?

I concede we need more flexibility than the "You have to wait for the following 20 people before you can go, we have to wait a week after one's completion for the next to start because so-and-so isn't on the board yet" model, but we also need more structure than the "Whatever you've got whenever it's typed, post signups & hope for the best" previous incarnation.

[-A-]

Why? What's wrong with sign-up threads going up quickly?

If we all agree to the limit in number of games (and we have, that isn't up for debate) then we have to have a system for when games get run. If I've created a game and happen to be online the very second a game gets finished I can quickly open my sign-ups. That isn't very fair on people who've been waiting to start their game - being online at the moment a game finishes is not a good qualification for getting to start a game. It's not that opening sign-ups quickly isn't good, it's that the free-for-all isn't good for players because it means games get started purely on the basis of whoever's online when the last one finishes.

The waiting list has two advantages on that front - RW can promote people who finish their games (or run good ones);

So people who sign up can essentially be messed around in favour of those with good reputations? There's no evidence to say that somebody like Sousa would run a better game than somebody like me. If people get to skip the queue, I don't see much point in a queue at all.

It's nothing to do with reputations, it's to do with who runs games to completion. I haven't seen any evidence of RW doing anything unfair with the power to bump games, so it's not a problem.

And how many times have we seen Mafias making their way to the top of the queue and failing to get the sign-up thread up in a reasonable amount of time? I don't see any proof that the waiting list encourages people to plan their Mafias better, or that somebody who is 5th on the list when somebody else signs up in 25th place will be in a better position to run a game by the time it's their turn.

Waiting a day or two for sign-ups isn't a crippling blow; and most of the people who've delayed starting their sign-ups have stopped running their game altogether - saving the Game Cube from mafias that might've been unenthusiastically run.

I don't see why people who think of an awesome Mafia idea and plan it all out intricately and get super exited but only really have the time to run it in the summer (let's say when they're on a break from school) should be condemned to either running their game in autumn when they can't dedicate the right amount of time to it or not running it at all, or waiting a whole year to run it the next summer when they probably couldn't care less.

That's a completely different point from the waiting list. If you think people should be able to book an approximate slot in advance, then I'm all in favour of that. Sousa did it and RW agreed - if you want to run a game a decent amount in advance, then that's fine - you're not really jumping the queue.

Meanwhile some slacker could be 1st on the list and hasn't even thought things through at all, so it goes to 2nd place, only they haven't been seen on EWB for weeks, so 3rd place gets a go and all the while 1st and 2nd stay at the top until they finally get their shit together while our aforementioned guy in 25th could be in a better position and doesn't get to run their game because they didn't think of the idea four months earlier. As I said before, being above somebody else on the waiting list doesn't mean you'll be any more ready than they are when the next spot opens up and that's why the list fails. We don't all work at the same rate and with the same enthusiasm

No, and opening a sign-up in a game of pot-luck doesn't make you a more enthusiastic game moderator either. I agree that if someone misses their start date they should be bumped at least a few spots down the list as a penalty for fucking the rest of us around. That's a much smaller point that's up for discussion, but you seem to be debating the merits of no waiting list OR game limit vs. waiting list + limit, instead of just debating the merits of the waiting list itself. The limit has been agreed to fairly and the waiting list is the best way of administering that. It's not a set in stone, some draconian measure - RW can promote people with a good track record of completing games and you CAN reserve a specific for your game if it's a bit in advance.

I'd be all in favour of a poll every month so that we can vote for one game to jump to the top of the list. People who're waiting have to manually submit their games each month if they're ready to run and then we vote for one to jump the queue. That keeps people wanting to run a game around promoting their game, rather than signing up when they get an idea and forgetting about it.

The list is getting smaller and smaller. When accounting for the recent people that dropped out, it's at something like 23. Realistically, at least 5 of those probably won't ever run (and that's going to be true whenever the list's at about 25.) That means that, if we can get games down to running for an average of one month each, you'll have around 3 months to wait to run your game at absolute most. That's the biggest problem for why the Cube's getting quieter and why the list's taking too long to get worked through - games are running slowly. Be this because of their larger and larger numbers, slack moderating or a downturn in enthusiasm - it's the principle reason for why things are dragging, not the list.

Running a game isn't a god-given right. They aren't Dome diaries because they require the involvement of dozens of other people. You wouldn't run BR and JP at the same time, it would be ludicrous. The Cube can only handle so many games and people will sign up for whatever's going. The game limit is the fairest way of making sure that there are always good, active games to play and enough interested players to make them work. It just doesn't work to say 'people will sign up for whatever they can handle' because we can't predict how much play we'll have in a given game. We might be night-killed on the first night. We might realise that we have nothing to contribute at one moment in the game because the conversation's become all about the source material. We might simply lose interest because it's not the kind of game we enjoy. A sign-up is not a guarantee of any kind of activity, and that's why people will sign-up for more than they will necessarily be able to contribute to.

Edited November 22, 2008 by -A-

[Gongsun Zan]

I vote for the polling system. Also because I thought of it first.

[TEOL]

You can't vote for the polling system because we don't have a polling system to take into account votes.

Silly.

[Ruki]

Halfway though Pesci's post I was thinking of people voting for what they want....or maybe even a committee of 3-5 people who select which game runs next?

[oldskool]

Who are these people, do we vote for them, or are they the five/six/however many are currently running mafias?

[Ruki]

Obviously I didn't think that far ahead

Maybe someone like RW, TEOL ,Zan (if he stays around ), Sousa, MPH?

[Matt]

When a game is nearing the end, stick up a poll and let EWB decide who's game they want to play. Only problem is I can see the "elite" getting to run all the games and guys like *looks at list* Evafreak would have to wait even longer.