What worked:
Innovation of the setup
Modgaming and massclaim protection
Balanced setup
Game mechanics
What didn't work:
Failure to account SC2Mafia town strength
Mod errors
Soft lynching
Daychat
Questions
Ambiguous role interactions
Starting with the negatives, I believe the biggest failure of this setup was not accounting SC2Mafia town strength in the setup, from a design perspective. I designed this setup adapting to mafiascum's setup balancing meter, not realizing that with shorter days and less analytical skills the SC2Mafia town would have a difficult time lynching scum purely on behavior (given that unskilled/apathetic town in SC2Mafia can just be as scummy as scum, and stronger scum can easily look townie without much work). I threw in a couple of blunt instruments during balancing discussion with Citrus (notably, changing the Pod from another vanilla weapon to an Inventor and adding the Flag), but I did not anticipate the Inventor being roleblocked all game/the Flag being useless with the mafia shattering their own weapons. (In addition, I did not anticipate how the town no-lynched Day 1 and 2, which caused the Flag to enter the game later than expected - and far little too late for the town, with Cato picking it up and dashing hopes of the town's catchup).
Another problem was this game were all of the mod errors. Perhaps it's probably because of my inexperience hosting larger games with short day/night periods but there were a couple of inexcusable errors including extended days/nights, inconsistent starting and ending times, and the big mod error with modkilling Primrose. I'm glad that it didn't affect the game too much (except remove all of the entertaining possibilities of the Miller weapon) except put the town at an extra body down, but nonetheless I should have doublechecked the votes and realized that Bonnie was the lynch, not Primrose. Also, I put up soft lynch on the start of Day 6 without realizing that the day was in mylo, thus meaning no soft lynches.
- I'm sorry for any confusion this may have caused. I also could have been more clear about the emphasis on behavioral analysis in the signup thread, as well as role PM quoting which led to the destruction of the Electrocution weapon.
Soft lynching, while a good idea in theory (and has worked well in another site with 72-hour-days) I felt caused too many people to be conservative with their voting. While I like the idea, there were many stalled out lynches - see the one on Thresh (?) at the end of Day 2, and the one on Madge at the end of Day 1. Soft lynching should be solving these problems, not cause more people to abstain from voting (or voting for people who are not the town's main suspects, thus making your vote useless)
I also felt that daychat (you can read the mafia chat - honestly one of the biggest I've ever seen) proved to be a big edge for the mafia. It allowed them to coordinate things in real time and was a focal point at allowing the mafia to dominate during this game. Again, while I like the idea of daychat in short days in theory (since 24 hours is way too short for planning, et al) I will be taking measures in the future (If I even have one... see Manifesto) to reduce the power of unlimited daychat. It's also possible that the daychat's power was magnified by how well the mafia used it (they used it early and often).
Another big problem I felt I had with the setup was the ambiguous OoO and answering setup questions. I often found that I was "afraid" to answer questions, since I come from a community that hosts a lot of closed setups and the default answer is usually "I can't answer that". While none of the wonky interactions appeared in game, it made it pretty difficult to answer hypothetical questions, and I was a bit afraid that I'd stumble upon a contradiction. I also should have been clearer with the OoO - swiped it completely from mafiascum, without realizing the strange role interactions (I chose to classify the shatter ability as a roleblock later in the game, for example, leaving me to make up things on the fly, which you should really never do as a mod)
Onto the positives, I do feel like without major review work done it was fairly innovative and balanced. The "balance" of the game is a crapshoot at best, since the weapon distributions means that items were assigned essentially randomly. I do feel like when I was randomizing the scumteam that it was pretty strong (most of them were fairly strong players) and I was delighted seeing the town randomize most of the "good" weapons (JoaT, Daykill, Inventor, Sheriff, etc), as I thought that it would outweigh any strong position the mafia could have took in the Day. I felt like the mafia used their only power role (remover) very well, and as to my knowledge I really like the items system of this game - it made it so players weren't autocleared for having a confirmable role, which meant that doing your own work in terms of figuring out who was town and scum, which is really the point of the game.
I also liked the modgaming and massclaim protection - some assumptions were made at the beginning, middle, and end to the game on how the role composition would look like, and they were mostly incorrect, as I pointed out in obs chat. Townies were also hesitant to claim their weapon due to the confirmed mafia factional shattering ability, which also made it that a full massclaim never really took place. (Keep in mind that a massclaim would have been pretty ineffective anyways, because of the role randomization). Take this as a lesson - modgaming will usually land you in trouble, and you should never base major decisions based on "I think the mod would have done X" - focusing on other forms of analysis will be better.
I also thought the game mechanics with the drafting was good, as it allowed people to choose their own roles. While the first weapon draft went a bit too long (Note to self: make this a Pick First game) Citrus fixed the later weapon drafts by incorporating them into Days, which was obviously much better than giving them their own phase.
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As for the play, I thought that the town played terribly for the first three Days or so (seems to be a recurring trend in M-FMs). I felt that the town did not take advantage of the extra discussion time with Weapon Drafting to get the scumhunting started, and ended with a lone wagon on Madge. Glimmer should have never expended the daykill on Clove - the best play would have been for Clove to claim that she had the Fire weapon (which allowed you to suicide) and use the daykill, lynch, and Fire weapon to clear out the top three lynches, which could have been HUGE - IIRC, Rue was a major candidate for a lynch around that time, and you guys could have dealt with some mislynch fodder as soon as Day 3 opened.
Town losing Nautilus was huge blow, as he was one of the few people who had a good grasp on the game (despite his posting restriction). Losing control of the Sheriff was bad but thankfully Nautilus breadcrumbed Twill as innocent after the Sheriff weapon was made public knowledge. I think Day 3 was when town went off its rockers - best play, again, would had been to lynch someone else and for Bonnie to shoot, but the scum strongarmed this lynch all the way through. The loss of Primrose also proved to be a big factor - even though Dagaen replaced into Madge Primrose was one of the few people trying to move the game forward and provided a counteract to the scum dominance of discussion (protip: If scum gain control of the discussion, they're bound to win barring unnecessary bussing, and that's what the scum in this game did here for Days 1-3)
A sidenote, but I think that town could also have benefitted greatly from judicious use of Occam's Razor. Why are you buying the ridiculous made-up stories by scum re: uninformed bus driver and redirector? The most simplest explanation is that they're lying. ika makes a great point:
Originally Posted by
ika
what i hate more is how everyone is trying to put some logical sense of night actions when nobody ever thinks of the most basic idea:
someone is lying
i mean with the game of everyone thinking of a floating bus driver, has anyone given an idea that maybe, he was not a bus driver and he lied?
this is what i find retarded, ppl trying to make logical sense of something when they don't think of the most basic answer
Luckily, a lynch was reached on Foxface Day 4 (who gave the town their first scum body) but I'd argue that the town didn't use the interactions well enough. See:
Foxface (8 [L-0]):
Thresh (Mayor), Madge,
The Boy with the Bad Leg,
Striker, Twill, Marvel, Peeta
Striker (3 [L-5]):
Cato, Rue, Foxface
This is how you use vote count analysis, folks - notice ALL OF THE SCUM pushing for Striker (town) mislynch and most of the town pushing for the mafia lynch (obviously, there were scum bussing, but scum usually never start trains on their buddies or hop on too early - the scum in this game defended each other hard).
Another situation happened on Day 5, which was the Day most crucial in providing the mafia victory. It looked the TBWTBL was going to be the lynch, but Marvel (who I admit had been playing a fair game up until now) implodes, giving the scum a free mislynch.
Marvel (7 [L-0]):
Thresh (Mayor),
The Boy with the Bad Leg, Glimmer,
Cato, Katniss, Rue
The Boy with the Bad Leg (2 [L-5]):
Striker, Marvel
Scum pushed this lynch through - pure and simple. More mafia were on that wagon than townies. I feel like better use of interaction + voting analysis could have pinned the scum to the wall HARD this game - see the Avatar M-FM, where I cleared a bunch of townies off of Monk Gyatso's flip.
The next couple of lynches were set in stone in favor of the town, but scum literally had to scapegoat somebody to win, as town was in Perpetual Mylo throughout. Cato did a great job distancing himself from his scumbuddies - only ONE of your teammates needs to survive to endgame to win, and that's what he did. It only took a Glimmer mislynch to win the game for the scum.
Overall, the scum outplayed the town on Days 1-3, and that dug town too deep a hole to come back and win it late game. The back-breaking lynch for them was the Marvel lynch; scum could just play an attrition war after that.