I think he means No Outside Communication but of course I could be mistaken (Like the Lockdown Mafia games).
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"Fun"
- Thread starter Alchemator
- Start date
2-0, baby. Don't think my teams have had a single casualty. It's really, really easy to hoodwink people when they have no other method of communication (and less roles available to them, as there is no leader to concentrate and manage resources). People get scared and won't speak up because they'll get killed, and they have no leader to hide behind, no leader they can secretly PM. Easy mode.
SDS: It would be interesting, but a lot of people would miss their normal games.
Honestly I think that a NOC game would be a good Expert Game idea, it seems like the main problem with the Lockdown Games was people acting stupidly/not being active on the village. But who knows, I didn't play in them, for all I know I would have done just as badly/worse. I still think the idea should be revisited in some manner, although there is no reason other types of games should stop altogether.
I also agree that forum mafia seems a little repetitive right now, as even if there are new types of game formats the same strategies seem to come into play. Hell, in my MegaMan Mafia game I tried to make it so that traditional strategies wouldn't work...yet people decided to employ them anyway until they did.
Now that I think about it, it seems like the planning aspect of mafia is the most rewarding, yet no one really plans anymore, they just follow the same "gameplan" as always. When the "gameplan" doesn't work, the village loses. When it does, they win. We reduce mafia from a planning and deception game to simply a deception game. Again, I am far from experienced when it comes to these things, but that is how I perceive things.
I also agree that forum mafia seems a little repetitive right now, as even if there are new types of game formats the same strategies seem to come into play. Hell, in my MegaMan Mafia game I tried to make it so that traditional strategies wouldn't work...yet people decided to employ them anyway until they did.
Now that I think about it, it seems like the planning aspect of mafia is the most rewarding, yet no one really plans anymore, they just follow the same "gameplan" as always. When the "gameplan" doesn't work, the village loses. When it does, they win. We reduce mafia from a planning and deception game to simply a deception game. Again, I am far from experienced when it comes to these things, but that is how I perceive things.
If people would allow it, I'd host a NOC expert game. NOC might be interesting mixed in with the idea of my Itemafia game, and I'd actually enjoy having Itemafia be an expert game (if allowed, that is).
Also, the issue of "there is no reason other types of games should stop altogether" is that while I agree, the fact that non-NOC games were not being hosted really forced ALL the top players to learn this new style in order to succeed. IT was a fun transition, and I really think it made me a better mafia player in my time (i did get damn good at it for a while).
Also, I'd say that much of the time, hosts (including myself from time to time) underestimate just how crippling NOC is to a disorganized village team, and set roles / ratios as if it was a regular old game of Mafia.
Also, the issue of "there is no reason other types of games should stop altogether" is that while I agree, the fact that non-NOC games were not being hosted really forced ALL the top players to learn this new style in order to succeed. IT was a fun transition, and I really think it made me a better mafia player in my time (i did get damn good at it for a while).
Also, I'd say that much of the time, hosts (including myself from time to time) underestimate just how crippling NOC is to a disorganized village team, and set roles / ratios as if it was a regular old game of Mafia.
There is a solution to information concentration that doesn't involve turning it into just a game of guesswork: not giving the village a BG. If the village had no BG, then anyone who assumed a position of village leader would just be killed and would not be able to lead the village. That would make it so a good strategy for the village would be to spread information out more evenly. But the villagers could still access some information, so they would not just be lynching blindly and could actually strategize instead.
NOC would take out all the fun for me lol, i would never play in one personally.
I dont understand all this hype about a village leader and every game being the same... what goes on in these small games? Theres a reason the village never wins in big mafias and that is because the village leader system isnt really that good lol false claims are easy to make (as long as its not closed theme) and moling does exist. As long as you don't make a foolproof way to prove you are villager as a host, it shouldnt be an issue.
I dont understand all this hype about a village leader and every game being the same... what goes on in these small games? Theres a reason the village never wins in big mafias and that is because the village leader system isnt really that good lol false claims are easy to make (as long as its not closed theme) and moling does exist. As long as you don't make a foolproof way to prove you are villager as a host, it shouldnt be an issue.
So what, are you going to openly say to all the villagers "sorry bro, you're fucked"? Is it going to be open roles mafia? The way Mafia is set up right now, it's nigh impossible to enforce any kind of "don't include a bg" thing unless you tell them straight up "there's no bg", which also happens to give the mafia a sizeable advantage.
fuck NOC, id rather play bingo or roulette or something, that is about as fun as that type or game
i do understand peoples sentiment that the whole village leader thing is not as fun as it possibly could be, but it has to be understood that villages almost never win even if they are run 100% perfectly, so when i take control of my village i have good reason to do this
but that is where the flaw lies - the game is unbalanced. the concept of a village itself is outdated in our kind of game. jackal and i already tried to adress that issue in viva la mafia where it worked out pretty well for a first try i reckon. only the endgame situation wasnt as cool as it could have been
i am trying to pick up where i left off there and develop another way to play without a dedicated village and have been encouraging other people to do so as well. for me, playing as a villager has always been the most fun even though i never won, but imho it is time to abandon that.
i hope my next game will be fun for everyone, but thats the thing with experimental stuff - you wont know unless you try, but most people are not willing to try so all we get is games that are carbon copies of one another and thus not fun to play for the majority of everyone since it is already predetermined that the village loses.
i do understand peoples sentiment that the whole village leader thing is not as fun as it possibly could be, but it has to be understood that villages almost never win even if they are run 100% perfectly, so when i take control of my village i have good reason to do this
but that is where the flaw lies - the game is unbalanced. the concept of a village itself is outdated in our kind of game. jackal and i already tried to adress that issue in viva la mafia where it worked out pretty well for a first try i reckon. only the endgame situation wasnt as cool as it could have been
i am trying to pick up where i left off there and develop another way to play without a dedicated village and have been encouraging other people to do so as well. for me, playing as a villager has always been the most fun even though i never won, but imho it is time to abandon that.
i hope my next game will be fun for everyone, but thats the thing with experimental stuff - you wont know unless you try, but most people are not willing to try so all we get is games that are carbon copies of one another and thus not fun to play for the majority of everyone since it is already predetermined that the village loses.
What? The village leader system works fine. Without it the village wouldn't even be perceived as a threat. The reason the village never wins big mafias is because of how broken the 2v1 system is: the mafias gang up on the village until they no longer have their voting power. The only times when moling has happened, the village leader made a dumb mistake, or someone had a mole power.
That's just how meta in general works. Just look at the state of Pokemon right now. When I first started playing in OU, the way I felt about Stealth Rock was that I really didn't want to use it. But I am a professional collectible card game designer. I know all too well the futility in trying to avoid an effective strategy just because it is too centralizing. But whereas I can ban or errata a card as a last resort if I feel it's a negative play experience, what can we do about a general playing style?
Personally, I think Staraptor Call might be on to something. I would broadcast to everyone that there is no BG, but make sure to strengthen the village accordingly.
I agree with a lot of the people in this thread (at least I think it is what they are implying) in that the fun in mafia comes from when you feel like you can do something significant, or you have some control. There are obviously other fun elements of mafia, like strategising as a team, the social aspect, and attempting to deceive people, but having the ability to significantly manipulate things with either an actual role's power or by attaining a position of perceived power in the village or as a neutral (or however it is attained) is definitely a fun thing to experience.
In the recent games I have hosted (Chaos Mafia and Wolf Mafia) I tried to make the roles fun to play and gave everyone a role of some significance (though I admit there were a few that were not fitting this description). While I don't really recommend that everyone tries to make games like those (because they aren't really intended to be as 'serious' as some other games, in that it is difficult to gain and maintain an advantage at any point due to the sheer strength of the other roles), I have received overall good feedback from hosting these games (not without complaints, however).
The next game I plan to host (with Gmax) will hopefully be fun but serious at the same time (it is a very experimental concept). There is an element of mafia that makes it less fun that I am trying to address in the creation of this game, so if I do that successfully then the game should definitely be fun!
I have had some other ideas about how to make the 2v1 system better since it is a system intended to maximise fun (as opposed to 1v1), some of these are: make lynches target users rather than aliases in anonymous format mafia, non-anonymous partially split mafias, make the mafias much smaller than they currently are (i.e. 19 v 5 v 5 v 1 or something). I have brought some of them up before, but they all have some inherent issues and none of them received universally good feedback.
Megaman served as a decent test of having an entirely split mafia faction (were both split?), and the result of this was that the village (finally) won a big mafia. This format doesn't fit the concept of mafia though, in that it wasn't an informed minority vs an uninformed majority, but uninformed of both. I don't think this game was fair to the mafia and I wouldn't advise that this be done again, but it is still a good point of reference to find how the village can win in the large format.
Anyway, since those last two paragraphs probably don't belong in this thread without something to tie them into fun: I do think 2v1 can still be fun and there are things that haven't been tried that could potentially make it more even, but I agree that it has been done to death and that some new formats should be tried for a while. I also agree that multi-faction mafia games such as Viva and those with a mix of win conditions like MGS and We Don't Need No have good potential to increase the fun in mafia while still remaining a competitive format.
In the recent games I have hosted (Chaos Mafia and Wolf Mafia) I tried to make the roles fun to play and gave everyone a role of some significance (though I admit there were a few that were not fitting this description). While I don't really recommend that everyone tries to make games like those (because they aren't really intended to be as 'serious' as some other games, in that it is difficult to gain and maintain an advantage at any point due to the sheer strength of the other roles), I have received overall good feedback from hosting these games (not without complaints, however).
The next game I plan to host (with Gmax) will hopefully be fun but serious at the same time (it is a very experimental concept). There is an element of mafia that makes it less fun that I am trying to address in the creation of this game, so if I do that successfully then the game should definitely be fun!
I have had some other ideas about how to make the 2v1 system better since it is a system intended to maximise fun (as opposed to 1v1), some of these are: make lynches target users rather than aliases in anonymous format mafia, non-anonymous partially split mafias, make the mafias much smaller than they currently are (i.e. 19 v 5 v 5 v 1 or something). I have brought some of them up before, but they all have some inherent issues and none of them received universally good feedback.
Megaman served as a decent test of having an entirely split mafia faction (were both split?), and the result of this was that the village (finally) won a big mafia. This format doesn't fit the concept of mafia though, in that it wasn't an informed minority vs an uninformed majority, but uninformed of both. I don't think this game was fair to the mafia and I wouldn't advise that this be done again, but it is still a good point of reference to find how the village can win in the large format.
Anyway, since those last two paragraphs probably don't belong in this thread without something to tie them into fun: I do think 2v1 can still be fun and there are things that haven't been tried that could potentially make it more even, but I agree that it has been done to death and that some new formats should be tried for a while. I also agree that multi-faction mafia games such as Viva and those with a mix of win conditions like MGS and We Don't Need No have good potential to increase the fun in mafia while still remaining a competitive format.
In addition to no BG, Enemy Watchers can also help with the leader situation.
A Watcher is a role that can see who targets a chosen target.
A Watcher is a role that can see who targets a chosen target.
I didn't know that!! AlphaBravo, best mafia player ever, period.