Forum Mafia Balance Discussion

[BBmolla]

Hi. I'm new here, and I just wanted to talk a bit about something and get your opinions on the balance of the current forum games. This is sort of a response to this thread.

I want this FM to be less about night actions and more about discussion. More deception, less luck. All the changes to standard FM gameplay reflect this desire of mine from roles to mechanics. If anything seems unbalanced, please let me know because I know I can always make mistakes.

As a background, I've played at EpicMafia for around a year and I've played at Mafiascum for half a year. I've also played in real life.

The interesting thing about the sites is that while they all play the same game, they all have very distinct styles.

- Epicmafia is a real time chat based game of mafia. In the competitive lobby you see a lot of thought out and balanced setups, and all players attempt to scumhunt to the best of their ability. You also have a sandbox lobby where players can play games more akin to Starcraft 2 mafia; not neccesarily balanced, a ton of power roles, and no civilians. Players in sandbox do not scumhunt, preferring to just rely on cop reports and such(regardless of whether the claim is real or not).

- Mafiascum is a forum based game of mafia. Many games are hosted throughout the forum under the different sections: Newbie Queue(Running a setup titled 2of4), Open Queue(Running setups where all roles are known), Normal Games(Setup is unknown, roles are only those defined as "normal) and Theme Games(Where you can have different mechanics or non-normal roles). All setups must be approved for balance by the balance team there.

Now Starcraft 2 mafia also has its own take on the genre, very similar to epicmafia's sandbox, where players do not really pay attention to who says what and mostly rely on cop reports. This is what the game is designed to do considering the small deadlines discouraging discussion, so that's fine.

This is what brings me to SC2 forum mafia. While the setups contain numerous "fun" roles, most that I have seen have not been the most balanced.

(aside from the fact that we haven't had a Mafia win yet and this will probably help Town more))

This right here indicates that you're having balance issues, and there's a pretty obvious reason for this: Town has too much power.

The Importance Of Civilians
My initial mafia experience consisted of 20 man setups where everyone had a power role. They were fun, but skill was unimportant and the games were all rather meaningless to me, only being fun if I got a "good role". Civilian was always the worst role to get and players would normally just leave if they got it. Why? Because in the power role oriented game, where your voice and scumhunting has no power, you're useless.

So what is the point of having a civilian in the setup? Well, he's actually the most important role in any balanced game.

For example, let's take a few different setups and compare them for balance. Assume all of these games start within the day. First off, this one:

Doctor
Jailor
Sheriff
Mafioso

This setup is absolutely imbalanced. Why? Because a mass claim can break it. If Doctor, Jailor, Sheriff all claim, the Mafioso must counter claim one of them. If he counter claims Doctor, the Jailor jails one of the doctor claims while the sheriff investigates them. If a kill occurs, the non jailed Doc is mafia. If he counter claims Jailor, the jailor kills him, obviously. If he counter claims Sheriff, they lynch one sheriff and the jailkeeper can kill the other if wrong. This situation is an auto lose situation.

Now, SC2 mafia's solution to the mass claim problem is random roles. However, random roles cause the setup to become "swingy" which means that the balance is impossible to determine due to the many possibilities. So this next setup:

Random Town
Random Town
Random Town
Mafioso

Is absolutely unpredictable and can not be balanced. A mass claim still breaks this because the town power will allow them to somehow confirm who the mafia is.

Now, let's look at one more setup.

Sheriff
Civilian
Civilian
Mafioso

This setup is balanced. More balanced at least. If a mass claim occurs, Mafioso can hide within the Civilians and if the cop claims, can just kill him. So this discourages mass claiming. The town benefits most by no lynching, which causes a 33% for the cop to die. If cop lives, the cop claims and outs his report. It's optimal more Mafia to counter claim cop in this situation, leaving the Civilian as a clear in LYLO. If cop dies, then the players just have to determine who the mafia is without any clear. How is that possible?

Scumhunting
Scumhunting is trying to determine the alignment of a player because of what they post. Some think this is impossible in forum mafia, but it's absolutely not. Scumhunting is a skill, and requires a lot of reading between the lines and understanding the difference between town actions and scum actions. A player is at L-1 and hasn't claimed yet, but PlayerA hammers. The player who was lynched was cop. Why did PlayerA hammer without letting them claim? Did they truly think they were mafia? Or were they mafia who wanted to get rid of a town role?

Scumhunting encourages both teams to try harder, because if one side is lazy they'll get destroyed by the other. Scumhunting is pretty much the opposite of "Blindly Following Reports" and "Random Lynching", instead giving reasons for why someone is mafia based upon what they've said and why the intentions behind that were most likely from a Mafia point of view.

But how does it work? I mean, can't mafia just act like town? Yes, they try. But you have to remember what their goal is so while sometimes they can just act town and get by, sometimes they have to decide whether they should go against their alignment to survive.

For example, the concept of bussing. I'll explain using an example I found while playing SC2 mafia a few days ago.

I was Sheriff, and it was the first day. I started a random lynch off of "Town Cat" because all he was doing was meowing. Two players voted with me, but suddenly two players voted for someone else at random. This bugged me because normally people just sheep the biggest vote. The rest of the town sheeped the other lynch and that player flipped town. I said to the town "Guys, Purple and Pink voted that player as a counter wagon, they're most likely Mafia with Towncat." I checked Towncat and low and behold, he was mafia. We lynched him and I told them to lynch Pink and Purple the next day, but instead they lynched the guy I confirmed as town instead. Brilliant.

Had both sides been trying fully, the counter wagon would have been noted as a scum oriented action and the players would have been lynched. So what should they have done?

They should have either given reasons for the counter wagon, or bussed. Bussing is when mafia vote their partner to lynch them. For example, if there are 3 Town and 2 Mafia left, and it's clear that the players believe your partner is mafia, then fighting the lynch will most likely be detrimental in the long run. Thus, you vote the player agreeing with the town that they are scum. Players will see this and go "Woah, he voted PlayerX who flipped mafia, he's probably town." Then you lynch someone else the next day to win the game.

There are many more examples of possible ways to go against your win condition to appear town, but I won't bother naming them all.

My Point
Balance of your setup should be determined by the desired effect of the game. If you want a fun game for everyone with a lot of night actions, but a lack of scumhunting, make a game where everyone is a power role. If you want a game that relies on skill during the day phase in order to find the mafia through interrogation and questioning motives, make the majority Civilians. If you want something in between, then obviously, make a few Power Roles and a few Civilians.

Also keep in mind that the more factors there are in the game, the swingier(less balanced) it will be. This does not make it bad, this will just make it more unpredictable, which in some players minds is really fun anyway.

Know what you want out of your setup and know what the players want as well. That's all I have to say. Comments/Thoughts welcome.

[BBmolla]

Also my point of this is not to change the way that setups are being made, just to give a better sense of how (I believe) balance works.

[TheJackofSpades]

You make a good point, let me illuminate a bit of a trend in the past 7 FMs(not counting FM4)
These are the percentage of citizens in the town, for each FM.
56% - FM1 - Cult victory
55% - FM2 - Town Victory(Close)
40% - FM3 - SK win(Anomally)
39% - FM5 - Town Victory(Close kinda... sorta...)
41% - FM7 - Town Victory
53% - FM6(Commoner + Sinner) - Sin victory(?)

So you'll note that, for a majority of the games with low citizen counts, the town has pulled fairly easy wins. The exceptions are FM3 and FM5, FM5 mostly due to Elixir's badass balancing skills by introducing ridiculous roles that even things out.

I guess the question is - "What is the proper balance?"
To which I really don't have an answer for.

While citizens are important, there are other aspects of game balance you have to consider as well, such as the complexity of the power roles in the town. Two jailors, a bus driver, and a doctor is significantly more powerful than an escort, a doctor, and two investigators for instance.

It's something to think about though, thank you for sharing your experience on the matter. It's something I will certainly take into consideration.

[FalseTruth]

Well said. I read it all, and I welcome you to the world of SC2 forum mafia. I actually agree with you on most of these points except for your supposition that scumhunting is not possible without civilians.

There is a underlying rule of thumb on these forum games that mostly everyone abides by: Do not reveal your role as town unless you have information that would be beneficial to reveal. This allows games to last longer in spite of the fact that a mass roleclaim would probably end the game much quicker. The games end up being more fun because of all the town PR you can claim and still get people to believe you.

For example, it's much more fun to have mafia claim town power than to claim citizen and just hide, no? It's more fun when the mafia is able to spread lies and misinformation that can confuse town than just hiding as a citizen claim the entire game, right?

What prevents all the citizens from roleclaiming at the start of the game and forcing the mafia to either roleclaim then, or die later when all the power roles are revealed? Either way, its only a matter of time.

You also forget that our mafia teams all had night actions as well. There are night actions that compound in usefulness when the amount of town PR increase. For example, the framer becomes more and more useful as the amount of power roles increase. The consort is more likely to block someone if there are less citizens and more power roles. Therefore, a town PR revealing without assured knowledge that everyone else will reveal is still risky. It is not as clear-cut as you might imagine.

You cite examples from SC2 mafia to prove your point, but you still have yet to experience the vast level of skill difference from there to here. The games in SC2 mafia are nothing like those on forum mafia. Forum mafia HAS citizens, and although they are not the majority of town, they are enough in number to allow mafia to hide within them if necessary.

Surprisingly, I have noticed in my experience of FM that most mafia do not elect to hide as citizens. Instead, they try to confuse town by claiming town PR because that sort of play is unexpected and WIFOM-y.

Another problem with your argument is that you fail to include the impact that neutrals have on the game. Most neutrals are inherently evil until the end of the game when usually side with town. Depending on the neutral, mafia can use them to their advantage to lie and deceive players.

Ultimately, the setup does not determine balance as much as the players themselves do. Think of a setup like the framework or blueprint of a building. If the construction workers don't follow the blueprint or deviate from it because of extraneous reasons(fred FM 5) or stupidity(Auckmid FM 6), the building will look nothing like the architect had originally intended it to look like. Balance is not clear cut, and we do not have an effective sample size of the same exact players playing in the same exact setup n amount of times. What is balanced for one group of players may not be balanced for another group of players.

If one way of balance(mass citizens) has been tried and tested to work consistently, that does not mean that other methods of balance cannot work.

[BBmolla]

Which power roles are in a setup are also key of course, I'm just generalizing things for the most part.

My intention was not to say that you can't scumhunt without Civilians, just that Civilians encourage scumhunting far more because that's the only thing Citizens can really utilize is their ability to scumhunt. Everyone can technically scumhunt, but their game will largely be influenced by what power they have. An example is a doctor, generally doctors tend to play similarly to mafia in that they're very reserved and try to hide in the back to avoid being found. A cop will most likely be very outspoken in attempts to get their report lynched or stop their report from being lynched. Civilian has no outside influence, and in fact the best situation for a Civilian is to be killed because this means that they died instead of a power role.

Mafia can still claim town power in a setup with Civilians, dependent on the setup and situation.

Civilians actually counter mass claims. For example in this setup:

Sheriff
Escort Doc(Roleblocks and Protects)
Civilian
Civilian
Civilian
Civilian
Civilian
Mafioso
Consigliere

A mass claim is not beneficial because the mafia will surely claim Civilian and then proceed to kill the Escort Doc and the Cop. However, if it came to a point in the game where it was 2 Civilians left, 1 Cop left, and both Mafia, then a Mafia could cc cop in an attempt to win in LYLO.

A town PR revealing isn't as risky as you think, especially in these enormous setups containing at least 1 Sheriff and 1 Doctor, which is an extremely broken combo unless the mafia have a Consort which just brings me back to the swinginess factor of the random PRs.

The example I cited from SC2 was leading up to a strategy that could be employed, but I was not actually comparing the SC2 Mafia to the forum mafia here. I'm saying had the situation been a forum game, the mafia would have lost because of what they did.

Claiming a PR as Mafia is beneficial in many cases because town does not like lynching PRs for obvious reasons. However, if its early in the game and the Mafia claims a town role and another player ccs(assuming that there would be no other sufficient slot to fulfill that same role), then the mafia have to keep the other player alive or be lynched. It's especially detrimental if it's sheriff. If the mafia claim Sheriff early on in the setup I posted above, the real sheriff will obviously counter claim. The mafia can kill the sheriff, but then the mafia who cc'd will get lynched leaving the other mafia in a bad situation.

Depending on the neutrals, most are just disruptive to the game. Cults are impossible to balance because they ruin any sense of planning. Jesters are just distractions to the town. Executioners are distractions like Jesters. Serial Killers are pretty underpowered unless they are bulletproof or investigation immune. Survivors are useless and cause Kingmaker situations(1 Mafia, 2 Town, 1 Survivor. Survivor can pick who wins. Most third parties can do this as well.) Amns are swingy. In general third parties wreck balance, excluding Serial Killer.

Balance is only not clear cut because the games that are being run are designed to be swingy, as I've said before. That's pretty much the definition of swingy.

Swinginess is not neccesarily a bad thing, I'm just not a fan. I could play an amazing game as mafia, but maybe my team mates get culted and I lose or maybe I get into a situation where there are no safe claims left for me so I auto lose. If I've played well I like to be rewarded.

Don't know how to respond to your last point.