Remove -prefer -blacklist, mafia2 vest hogging up all the "fun" roles

Prefer/blacklist role system should be removed, it lets veterans and people who play all day, pick all the roles that newbies might want to try. Noobies may never roll certain roles!

I recently reached 20,000 points, and on my way to 20,000 points, I could play 20 games and roll nothing but "doctor", "investigator", "sheriff", "some mafia/Triad" role which I found frustrating and repetitive. Now that I have 20,00 points and can opt to prefer roles, I have to say, it is easy to get the roles I want "jailor", "vigilante", "judge", and I feel bad.

I'm sure there are people who just started out, or people who just don't play as much who want to try new roles ("constable", "double flower", "enchantress"). Do you want people with fancy colored name to always be "veteran", "jailor', "judge" , "jester" all the time? Town could probably lynch "Taylor Swift" and this person would be veteran 8 out of 10 times.

To recap, the prefer role system is too exclusionary and shuts out certain players from coveted roles, and should be amended or removed. I hope to hear some thoughts and see change.

Let's open up those "fun" roles to others, and don't let sc2 mafia vets be greedy and gorge on all the "fun" roles, let's learn to share roles.

P.S. If it weren't for Frinckles' generous holiday points, it would have taken me another year or two to get to 20,000 points.

/second

It should be removed or revamped to give much less priority to what players blacklist and prefer.

I totally agree.

I'm sick and tired of the same people preferring jailor/vet to just take out people n1.

Coupled with idiots who use the same name every game and then cry that they are being witch hunted. It also creates problems when people always prefer gov or vet and then using that as a reason you shouldn't lynch them.

One possible solution:

Each game has a 50% chance to just ignore everyones blacklists and prefer lists.

So that way half the games the people with these features get their full 100% benefits, but the other half of the time the game is just true random and new players can have the chance to play some of the more in-demand roles.

Why do this over just weakening the priority of blacklist/prefer?
If 6 players all -prefer Judge, and the strength of prefer is weakened so each player only has as low as a 20% chance of getting a role they prefer, then there is still over a 70% chance that judge goes to one of these slots because there are still just so many players preferring the role.


Compare this to the solution I proposed where you can leave blacklist/prefer at 100% strength but only half the time. It would in effect be like making the strength of the prefer/blacklist 50% the strength of what it currently is. But because all the rolls are dependent, correlated rolls, new players get a shot at rolling the in-demand rolls 50% of the time. Whereas leaving the rolls uncorrelated could see the strength of blacklist/prefer weakened all the way to just 20% and in-demand rolls like Judge might still only be available for new players 30% of the time - much lower than the 50% with my solution.

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Originally Posted by Lag

One possible solution:

Each game has a 50% chance to just ignore everyones blacklists and prefer lists.

So that way half the games the people with these features get their full 100% benefits, but the other half of the time the game is just true random and new players can have the chance to play some of the more in-demand roles.

Why do this over just weakening the priority of blacklist/prefer?
If 6 players all -prefer Judge, and the strength of prefer is weakened so each player only has as low as a 20% chance of getting a role they prefer, then there is still over a 70% chance that judge goes to one of these slots because there are still just so many players preferring the role.


Compare this to the solution I proposed where you can leave blacklist/prefer at 100% strength but only half the time. It would in effect be like making the strength of the prefer/blacklist 50% the strength of what it currently is. But because all the rolls are dependent, correlated rolls, new players get a shot at rolling the in-demand rolls 50% of the time. Whereas leaving the rolls uncorrelated could see the strength of blacklist/prefer weakened all the way to just 20% and in-demand rolls like Judge might still only be available for new players 30% of the time - much lower than the 50% with my solution.

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This said, I think changes like this would be very unpopular among the majority of the veteran players that have access to these features, and veteran players likely contribute a majority of the play-hours in the mod. It is a difficult balancing act to make changes that benefit newer players without upsetting veteran players - a balancing act that ultimately depends on forecasted new player growth.

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Originally Posted by Lag

One possible solution:

Each game has a 50% chance to just ignore everyones blacklists and prefer lists.

So that way half the games the people with these features get their full 100% benefits, but the other half of the time the game is just true random and new players can have the chance to play some of the more in-demand roles.

Why do this over just weakening the priority of blacklist/prefer?
If 6 players all -prefer Judge, and the strength of prefer is weakened so each player only has as low as a 20% chance of getting a role they prefer, then there is still over a 70% chance that judge goes to one of these slots because there are still just so many players preferring the role.


Compare this to the solution I proposed where you can leave blacklist/prefer at 100% strength but only half the time. It would in effect be like making the strength of the prefer/blacklist 50% the strength of what it currently is. But because all the rolls are dependent, correlated rolls, new players get a shot at rolling the in-demand rolls 50% of the time. Whereas leaving the rolls uncorrelated could see the strength of blacklist/prefer weakened all the way to just 20% and in-demand rolls like Judge might still only be available for new players 30% of the time - much lower than the 50% with my solution.

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I didn't read anything past the white line, TLDR, but that idea got me hyped up lol. Idk why but it sounds just so so fun for some reason!

Shouldn't roles be rolled first and then assigned based on prefer/blacklist? Don't you think it is fucked up that prefer/blacklist affects what roles are in the game?

What's hilarious is that I've yet to hear a good argument for why they should exist.

So why discuss solutions if there is no good reason other than for so called "veterans" to abuse prefer blacklist? Remove them.

I totally agree.
Removing blacklist and prefer means a better world.

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Originally Posted by Lag

This said, I think changes like this would be very unpopular among the majority of the veteran players that have access to these features, and veteran players likely contribute a majority of the play-hours in the mod. It is a difficult balancing act to make changes that benefit newer players without upsetting veteran players - a balancing act that ultimately depends on forecasted new player growth.

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Not my problem people are used to their abusing of prefer and blacklist.

More power to the players. I'm tired of sitting through games for 30 minutes being locked in to some shitty save because it is insanely difficult to get people to repick, tired of loser "vets" preferring all the power roles and doing whatever they want with no regard.

Not arguing the point here, but I am genuinely curious to see a sample size of how many players with prefer actually using it on a regular basis. I could be part of a small minority but I very infrequently use it despite having it for so long and actually enjoy getting different roles.

On that note, I feel like you take away most of the value that points bring to the game. People aren't grinding them to get different character appearances, although it's a nice thing to have as well. Unless your idea is intended to change the entire structure of the game.

I agree. Those commands have ruined the meta for a while now.

Prefer should be removed. Blacklist can stay but it should be nerfed.

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Originally Posted by Unknown1234

Not arguing the point here, but I am genuinely curious to see a sample size of how many players with prefer actually using it on a regular basis. I could be part of a small minority but I very infrequently use it despite having it for so long and actually enjoy getting different roles.

On that note, I feel like you take away most of the value that points bring to the game. People aren't grinding them to get different character appearances, although it's a nice thing to have as well. Unless your idea is intended to change the entire structure of the game.

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So the only reason people play mafia is to get points to abuse prefer and blacklist?

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Originally Posted by Unknown1234

Not arguing the point here, but I am genuinely curious to see a sample size of how many players with prefer actually using it on a regular basis. I could be part of a small minority but I very infrequently use it despite having it for so long and actually enjoy getting different roles.

On that note, I feel like you take away most of the value that points bring to the game. People aren't grinding them to get different character appearances, although it's a nice thing to have as well. Unless your idea is intended to change the entire structure of the game.

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Players who can prefer will tend to prefer most of the games. Moreover, most of the time it's the exact same preferred roles.

Off the top of my head: Me, Killy, Toast, Velliare, Taunt, Intaro zzorange, etc.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

So the only reason people play mafia is to get points to abuse prefer and blacklist?

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It's not the reason people play, but it's definitely added incentive for people to go for achievements, play in roulette, etc. Not everyone intends to abuse it when they get it I'm sure, but I can't argue this because I have no numbers to go off of.

I still think there could be a better solution than removing it altogether. Not saying it doesn't have it's problems right now but I don't know if removing both altogether is a better alternative.

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Originally Posted by MrMostache

Players who can prefer will tend to prefer most of the games. Moreover, most of the time it's the exact same preferred roles.

Off the top of my head: Me, Killy, Toast, Velliare, Taunt, Intaro zzorange, etc.

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I agree and I know of a few other names that use it to get the same role every game (ceko used to play as sheriff quite often when he played). I still don't see how those people don't get bored of the same roles over and over, with the exception of veteran being used to survive/troll people. It's nice to have to use on the occasion, but not something I've ever enjoyed using constantly.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

More power to the players. I'm tired of sitting through games for 30 minutes being locked in to some shitty save because it is insanely difficult to get people to repick, tired of loser "vets" preferring all the power roles and doing whatever they want with no regard.

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Contrary to the opinion of this thread I don't really have a problem with vets preferring roles.

Mostly because a chunk of the ones (currently) don't pick the same name so it isn't a guaranteed slot confirmed or scumlisted.

Basically it's pretty easy to hard counter someone that picks the same role all the time.

Does it suck to sometimes not get a role you want? Sure, but why would you play to get the same role 24/7?

The top 1% of people in points can pick whatever roles they want, it often does not affect the game heavily and everyone else typically enjoys what they got anyways.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

Shouldn't roles be rolled first and then assigned based on prefer/blacklist? Don't you think it is fucked up that prefer/blacklist affects what roles are in the game?

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Monitoring this thread, but roles are generated before prefer.

You cannot -prefer cult to invoke cult 100% of the time if it has a 0.001% to spawn.

I mean, they took away mothership extended. This -prefer and -blacklist is the last actual use for points beyond cosmetics. And guess what, fancy cosmetics gets you killed.

You have to have cheese at the end of the maze.

If this comment gets 10 likes I will retool my replay analytics tool to parse the 10k replay set to see how many players per game on average use -prefer

B)

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Originally Posted by Lag

If this comment gets 10 likes I will retool my replay analytics tool to parse the 10k replay set to see how many players per game on average use -prefer

B)

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I can't find the like button, but here *throws like* If you can harvest data efficiently, is it possible to know which roles go afk the most? Sometimes, I wondered if this prefer role system is basically forcing us to "grind" for points. What better way to grind than run Mafia2 and go afk? Die quick and go afk.

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Originally Posted by Drizzt

I mean, they took away mothership extended. This -prefer and -blacklist is the last actual use for points beyond cosmetics. And guess what, fancy cosmetics gets you killed.

You have to have cheese at the end of the maze.

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You have "quack" now. If you have a lot of points, you can used colored text in chat to STAND OUT!

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Originally Posted by Varcron

The top 1% of people in points can pick whatever roles they want, it often does not affect the game heavily and everyone else typically enjoys what they got anyways.

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Actually, precisely because these experienced, point-wealthy whales tend to choose power roles such as veteran, it affect gameplay a bit. Some of us assume they are all veterans, makes people stay away from them at least on the first night, due to the prefer system. I feel if the playing field was leveled, people will be treated more equally. Once they die, they can call their a super special salt ship for their privileged behind; but when they are playing, they should get equal chance to land all roles like everybody else so the fun goes around, not just at the top.

Hey take it easy guys we still have another year before Mafia 3.0 comes out.

I would weigh in here since am on the 20k+ points bracket.

Prefer/BL is good for veteran players but it sucks for new players. Personally speaking, If you really wanted to attract new players, this is one of the many things you need to address. I never use the options and is currently only blacklisting one role: Street Racer, cos this is a scapegoat role for dummy evils claiming town.

The problem with preferring is the "prefer + blacklist combo". Maybe restricting how many prefer you can use (In ToS, I believe you can only use one role to prefer) is a good idea? On the other hand, you can use prefer or blacklist, but not both.

But this doesn't address the problem of OP's situation: New players have zero-very slim chances of getting the new roles such as Constable/DF/Vig. That's the disadvantage of having a system where a town killing role has a non-existent backlash when it kills a town member.

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Originally Posted by Varcron

The top 1% of people in points can pick whatever roles they want, it often does not affect the game heavily and everyone else typically enjoys what they got anyways.

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As an FM player, I tend to agree with you. But from a purely-arcade player's perspective? Not a chance. There's a reason people prefer jailor/vet/jester every single game on 1.0. Now, more OP roles such as Constable/DF are added to the mix.

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Originally Posted by Frinckles

Monitoring this thread, but roles are generated before prefer.

You cannot -prefer cult to invoke cult 100% of the time if it has a 0.001% to spawn.

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That's good, that's what I originally thought.

But it introduces another problem, which is that if I prefer a role and I don't get it, I can reasonably assume with high probability that the role isn't in the game.

Take for example a judge/crier question. Say I ended up rolling town but preferred judge, unless someone else preferred judge, the guy speaking at night is crier.

It gives veteran players WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION from outside the game itself.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

That's good, that's what I originally thought.

But it introduces another problem, which is that if I prefer a role and I don't get it, I can reasonably assume with high probability that the role isn't in the game.

Take for example a judge/crier question. Say I ended up rolling town but preferred judge, unless someone else preferred judge, the guy speaking at night is crier.

It gives veteran players WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION from outside the game itself.

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Bruh, I remember someone preferring survivor and then calling out the survivor claims.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

That's good, that's what I originally thought.

But it introduces another problem, which is that if I prefer a role and I don't get it, I can reasonably assume with high probability that the role isn't in the game.

Take for example a judge/crier question. Say I ended up rolling town but preferred judge, unless someone else preferred judge, the guy speaking at night is crier.

It gives veteran players WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION from outside the game itself.

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No you just don’t get how it works, maybe if Frinckles copy pasted the code it would be more clear. Prefer is a fairly weak thing, blacklist is far stronger

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Originally Posted by Lag

One possible solution:

Each game has a 50% chance to just ignore everyones blacklists and prefer lists.

So that way half the games the people with these features get their full 100% benefits, but the other half of the time the game is just true random and new players can have the chance to play some of the more in-demand roles.

Why do this over just weakening the priority of blacklist/prefer?
If 6 players all -prefer Judge, and the strength of prefer is weakened so each player only has as low as a 20% chance of getting a role they prefer, then there is still over a 70% chance that judge goes to one of these slots because there are still just so many players preferring the role.


Compare this to the solution I proposed where you can leave blacklist/prefer at 100% strength but only half the time. It would in effect be like making the strength of the prefer/blacklist 50% the strength of what it currently is. But because all the rolls are dependent, correlated rolls, new players get a shot at rolling the in-demand rolls 50% of the time. Whereas leaving the rolls uncorrelated could see the strength of blacklist/prefer weakened all the way to just 20% and in-demand rolls like Judge might still only be available for new players 30% of the time - much lower than the 50% with my solution.

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I like this solution.

A nerf rather than outright removal is a middle ground between empowering new players and disenfranchising old players. It also retains the incentive for players to earn points.

Also agreed on the method of nerfing. Simply reducing Prefer weight will not solve anything if there are many Prefer / Blacklist-capable players in a game; old players are still highly likely to get preferred roles than new players. Instead, ignoring blacklists / prefer lists 50% of the time gives new players a fair chance of getting desirable roles even when there are many old players in a match.

Blacklist should be cut to 5 roles at best and prefer should be removed.

I've yet to hear a good argument for why they should exist. For why OGI should be allowed in the game.

Why not make it public who prefers and blacklists what? You might say well the save has information that is OGI and used to generate the game, but people get a lot more information about the save.

Why not when someone blacklists roles, put the confirmation in public chat?

so when I type -blacklist doctor
it will say Renegade has blacklisted Doctor. For all to see.

If the game reported blacklist and prefer commands, it would change unconfirmable OGI to confirmed OGI, a much worse scenario.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

Why not make it public who prefers and blacklists what? You might say well the save has information that is OGI and used to generate the game, but people get a lot more information about the save.

Why not when someone blacklists roles, put the confirmation in public chat?

so when I type -blacklist doctor
it will say Renegade has blacklisted Doctor. For all to see.

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No offense but this is the exact opposite of a solution to the problem

Nah if I have access to my own OGI knowing what I prefer and blacklist and what gets rolled, everyone should have access to it.

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Originally Posted by hellow0

Actually, precisely because these experienced, point-wealthy whales tend to choose power roles such as veteran, it affect gameplay a bit. Some of us assume they are all veterans, makes people stay away from them at least on the first night, due to the prefer system. I feel if the playing field was leveled, people will be treated more equally. Once they die, they can call their a super special salt ship for their privileged behind; but when they are playing, they should get equal chance to land all roles like everybody else so the fun goes around, not just at the top.

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This is a mentality problem, assuming that because they have colored names they are automatically a preferred vet. What if they're DH or GF? I get players don't like visiting colored names N1 because of the fear of death by combat, but if they're something else it could be important to see them.

Salt ship if i'm remembering right was recently removed from the game. If anything I'd concur with nerfing blacklist, as that is the more powerful of the two functions by maybe limiting it to 7 roles.

I think this issue is more so brought up by people using the same name, or constantly using HTML colored names and then wondering why people recognize the pattern and just kill/lynch said individuals for prefer/blacklisting the same roles every game. Removing them outright, or making player choices public would dissuade people from playing the game in my opinion.

Its unsurprising that when this game has been around for 10 years that you have many players with 20k points or more, and I feel they shouldn't be shafted for continuing to populate the game when new players in the Sc2 arcade are dwindling. As for those who don't have 20k points yet, The entire holiday update has been handing out +50 points per game which is huge before also taking into account roulette/achievements.

I don't care about targetting specific roles but i do use prefer to target a faction. I prefer playing town over "evil" roles, the only ones i tolerate are neut evils and benigns because they can't be detected by most invests. So i usually just prefer 15 roles, mostly town and maybe a few neut evils/benigns. So even if u got rid of prefering exact roles it would be nice if we could prefer at least a whole faction or roles like Town Prot, Town Invest, Triad Support, Neut Evil etc. Extending blacklist could also be an option because right now it's too small to rely on especially that triad/mafia roles count as 2.

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Originally Posted by Varcron

This is a mentality problem, assuming that because they have colored names they are automatically a preferred vet. What if they're DH or GF? I get players don't like visiting colored names N1 because of the fear of death by combat, but if they're something else it could be important to see them.

Salt ship if i'm remembering right was recently removed from the game. If anything I'd concur with nerfing blacklist, as that is the more powerful of the two functions by maybe limiting it to 7 roles.

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Visiting colored names n1 is just asking for getting MM/Forger/Vanguard/Lookout/Doctor/Bodyguard on the same target. It's not worth the risk.

How is it at all fair that certain people get to pick their roles?

As for what Aamirus said, there's never been an instance where I preferred a role and didn't get it but it appeared in the game. It is a near 100% guarantee if the role spawns.

All of this "but think of the veterans!!!" is a joke. So let's keep two classes of mafia players, those that get an insane power to select their roles, and 'newbs' who get leftovers.

Also, it doesn't surprise me that any discussion of this is being poorly received by the so called "veteran" players, same shit happens in forum mafia with the open secret of hosts "massaging" or handpicking roles for signs. Oh so and so won't sign unless they get X role!

Delete prefer and cut blacklist in half. If you need prefer and blacklist to have fun, then you probably don't understand the concept of mafia.

Playing Mafia/Triad and Neut Killers is not fun in public lobbies. Most of the time u will be randomly found by some invest early on and everyone will believe them for no reason or even just randomly lynched because people have no clue how to play this game.

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Originally Posted by RufusPL

Playing Mafia/Triad and Neut Killers is not fun in public lobbies. Most of the time u will be randomly found by some invest early on and everyone will believe them for no reason or even just randomly lynched because people have no clue how to play this game.

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Why should you get any preference to not pick these roles over others?

Well for all i care they could make prefer and blacklist available to everyone, points are pretty much meaningless anyway.

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Originally Posted by RufusPL

Well for all i care they could make prefer and blacklist available to everyone, points are pretty much meaningless anyway.

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That is another option I would be open to.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

same shit happens in forum mafia with the open secret of hosts "massaging" or handpicking roles for signs. Oh so and so won't sign unless they get X role!

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Excuse me, what now? Give me a name and the slightest resemblance of a hint of that happening.

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Originally Posted by OzyWho

Excuse me, what now? Give me a name and the slightest resemblance of a hint of that happening.

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https://www.sc2mafia.com/forum/showt...l=1#post909033

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Originally Posted by hellow0

I can't find the like button, but here *throws like* If you can harvest data efficiently, is it possible to know which roles go afk the most? Sometimes, I wondered if this prefer role system is basically forcing us to "grind" for points. What better way to grind than run Mafia2 and go afk? Die quick and go afk.



You have "quack" now. If you have a lot of points, you can used colored text in chat to STAND OUT!




Actually, precisely because these experienced, point-wealthy whales tend to choose power roles such as veteran, it affect gameplay a bit. Some of us assume they are all veterans, makes people stay away from them at least on the first night, due to the prefer system. I feel if the playing field was leveled, people will be treated more equally. Once they die, they can call their a super special salt ship for their privileged behind; but when they are playing, they should get equal chance to land all roles like everybody else so the fun goes around, not just at the top.

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Quack? You mean Ducky? I do love the ducky. Colored names I never went for because it attracted attention.

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Originally Posted by Renegade

https://www.sc2mafia.com/forum/showt...l=1#post909033

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wtf did i just read..

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Originally Posted by RufusPL

Playing Mafia/Triad and Neut Killers is not fun in public lobbies. Most of the time u will be randomly found by some invest early on and everyone will believe them for no reason or even just randomly lynched because people have no clue how to play this game.

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Yeah I can agree with that, it takes alot less energy to win as town rather than neut killing/triad/maf

There is a tip though to make you enjoy it a bit more: You only need to sound correct and sure enough to convince them, not be entirely correct. It'll save you hassle in the later days, and in the earlier days you can just hang low and strategize with your maf buddies if you're maf, or with yourself if you're NK

That kind of derails the thread a little bit, but I felt it was important to point that out.

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Originally Posted by RufusPL

Visiting colored names n1 is just asking for getting MM/Forger/Vanguard/Lookout/Doctor/Bodyguard on the same target. It's not worth the risk.

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Eh I visit them N1 anyways, it's pretty rare that you get called out or pranked by a doc/BG; at least in my experience.

MM though is a different kettle of fish