Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.
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  1. ISO #1

    Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    With the upcoming starter game creating closer I think this would be an idea time for people to post their methods and thoughts on scum/town reading/hunting.

    It would be really helpful if veterans, or even newer players, can explain their methods of play, offer tips or even post a guide on gameplay.

    I'm going to list a few questions to make it easier to reply but feel free too ignore them and post what you want.
    If you don't want to post because you fear it may affect your meta, feel free to use a smurf account.

    1)How do you scum hunt?
    2)How do you town hunt?
    3)What makes you scum read people?
    4)What makes you town read people?
    5)What give no alignment indication
    6)How do you get others to read you as town/scum
    Cryptonic made this sig

    Quote Originally Posted by HentaiManOfPeace View Post
    gotchu fam

    Attachment 28016

  2. ISO #2

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Biggest thing for me in scum hunting and town hunting is to interact with other players as much as possible, question their motives for stuff (their votes, their non votes, their pushes, their reads, etc), poke and prod. Question question question. Try to get them to explain their stances/thoughts. Try to figure out why they answer the way they do, or why they refuse to answer if they do that too.

    I bring this up quite a lot in game, but simple "scum wouldn't do this" or "town acts like this" thoughts don't do it for me. Such as:

    "You're being super defensive. Scum tends to be defensive"

    Always question why the person is doing the action (being defensive) rather than simply looking at the face value of the action. Why is this person being defensive? What is the context of the situation that is causing them to act that way? Why is this person acting frustrated? Do they have a genuine reason to be, or does it conveniently fit the agenda that they want to accomplish?

    Next - don't tunnel your reads. Everyone has this problem. You need to re-evaluate. Don't tunnel your scum reads, and don't tunnel your town reads either. I've been burned way too many times from thinking "there's no way this person is scum" and it just gives them an easy win if they can just not rock the boat once they've achieved that town status. Even if you town read someone, you need to keep interacting with them, see where their head is at.

    Finally, avoid conflating "pro-town" with "town" and "anti town" with "scum". Big big big big big mistake. It's much too easy to look at someone's anti town actions as scummy and pro town actions as townie. Truth is that there are plenty of people who play super anti town and are just trolly/uncaring town and plenty that play super pro town and super helpful but are just scum in sheep's clothing. So if you see an action as "yo this is anti town, you are hurting our chances of winning", again question why that person is acting that way - are they super apathetic for a certain reason? What may that be? Could they be reaction testing people? Think deeper.
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaCucho

  3. ISO #3

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    My thought process is a bit different and I've never really been able to explain it in game to people

    I interact with people D1 and give a really, really loose set of reads to get a reaction from people, specifically those in null or scum areas. For example: if I saw SuperJack as a scum based on my loose reads, and he absolutely flipped and started going tooth and nail tunneling me, I would be inclined to think he is either a TPR or a Scum-aligned killing role/important role.

    Quote Originally Posted by BananaCucho
    Next - don't tunnel your reads. Everyone has this problem. You need to re-evaluate. Don't tunnel your scum reads, and don't tunnel your town reads either. I've been burned way too many times from thinking "there's no way this person is scum" and it just gives them an easy win if they can just not rock the boat once they've achieved that town status. Even if you town read someone, you need to keep interacting with them, see where their head is at.
    This is a massive thing I see specifically new players (I did it too in my first game) do. If you can follow the "no tunneling" rule then you will overall be less prone to a mislynch based on a thunderdome. Also, make sure to ALWAYS triple check someone that is confirmed in your eyes, because as Banana said we've been bitten quite a few times by our confirmed town reads.

    Quote Originally Posted by BananaCucho
    Truth is that there are plenty of people who play super anti town and are just trolly/uncaring town and plenty that play super pro town and super helpful but are just scum in sheep's clothing. So if you see an action as "yo this is anti town, you are hurting our chances of winning", again question why that person is acting that way - are they super apathetic for a certain reason? What may that be? Could they be reaction testing people? Think deeper.
    One of my main reasons why I get mislynched is because people don't do the extra thinking Banana is saying here. My playstyle is inherently scummy to get reactions from people (this is a good way to town hunt btw over short periods of time). Make sure if you see someone who is acting somewhat strangely in your eyes to question them, but not immediately write them off. Multiple games have been lost because people did not do this kind of thinking.
    Last edited by Varcron; June 16th, 2020 at 01:22 PM.

  4. ISO #4

  5. ISO #5

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    1.) Scum are forced to lie in order to win, this is a fundamental truth to mafia. Keeping up these lies is a very strenuous task, and a few behaviors exhibited by someone who is consistently lying become noticeable, such as taking a long time to post relatively short messages (they have to think to keep track of what lies they've already said), inconsistencies in reads/posts (when they fail to keep track of the aforementioned lies), and slipping (when the lie briefly "slips" out). Of course it isn't just about lies, it is easier to fuck up a game as scum than it is as town (most of the time), so scum tend to be a nervous wreck when it comes to their survival, but most experienced players have found a way to hide this feeling.
    One thing I catch scum doing quite often is giving out subpar reads, as in, they are low-effort, BS, or not very in-depth. Scum in most games already know the alignment of every other player in the game, so when presenting reads, they obviously can't be honest about who they think is what, and are instead forced to lie. Coming up with fake reasons as to why someone is scum is a very difficult task, almost impossible in some cases when someone is near universally town-read, or doesn't exhibit any scummy/anti-town behaviors. So instead of coming up with elaborate reasons as to why X is scum, they can use phrases like "vibe", "gut-reading", or "feeling", or come with illogical or completely fake reasons, gas-lighting the entire town.

    2.) On the contrary, I suck at townhunting, logically, town should be thinking and presenting in the same way that I do (assuming that I'm town), so I tend to have an affinity towards players that share the same ideas and reads.

    3.) I scum read players for all the reasons above, but they get extra points if they act in ways that are detrimental to the success of the town.

    4.) See above

    5.) EFFORT IS NOT ALIGNMENT INDICITIVE.
    I have to hammer this point into players heads constantly. Any player, town or scum can make a huge wallpost, or post frequently. I see players townread others for making a small essay but don't read into it that much beyond the fact that big post = good, which is fundamentally flawed. This works in tandem with a lack of posts, don't mistake a lack of posting with lurking though, a lurking player is reading the game, and thinking about all the posts, someone who's inactive may simply have real life matters to attend to.
    Another thing that isn't necessarily alignment indicative is self preservation, town know they're town 100% of the time, so they always know that their own death is detrimental to their goal of town winning (in most cases), scum think the same way. Town should only consider their own death if it were to give the greatest odds of winning, just like scum, and their willingness to bus.

    6.) I get townread for presenting my thought processes in a clear and honest manner, which is something I recommend all town do. Sometimes I get scum read for being focused on my survival to which I reply "fuck you"
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    deathworld's and RLVG's suicides made me lul. I take a lot of pleasure in knowing that I gave you an night action, and that you used it to kill yourself.
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    At least Mesk has lewdy lefty and raunchy righty. You're not even Canadian.
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    Deathworlds is simply better than us at this game. Don't kill them for that.
    Quote Originally Posted by Stealthbomber16 View Post
    fucketh me in the ass

  6. ISO #6

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    This has already been said, but I will say it again: reevaluation is extremely important. It's also the part almost everyone struggles with, even very high level players (some would say that because of the general accuracy of their reads, they are more confident with them). Without reevaluating your reads, you will disregard meaningful information because of your bias for or against a player, and that can be misleading.


    1. I won't pretend to be a pro scum hunter, because I'm not. However, there are principles that are generally admitted as being the way to go. First of them is the logical aspect of one's point of view. Why would X say Y as town? As scum? is a reasoning that should lead your scum hunting efforts, at least until you have a scum flip to work with for associative reads. Second of them is info hunting. In order to analyze meaningful posts, you need meaningful posts in the thread from everyone, or at least from most people. How to generate meaningful posts? By accusing people. Accusations make people react. They create defenses, support to the attack, votes, trains, etc., and that will allow you to analyze meaningful posts, especially with associative reads (i.e. "X is scum because he defended Y in scummy way [explains the scummy way]").

    2. The logical aspect of one's point of view is also very important for town hunting. If someone has a lot of posts that only make sense from a Town PoV, they are very probably town. It's relatively easy to establish such a read if you have a scum flip with a lot of interactions around it: sometimes, specific posts will be absolutely nonsensical if you try to consider them from the point of view of the flipped scum's teammate. Other than that, there are meta-based reads, usefulness-based reads, logic-based reads (i.e. reads based on how logical one's posts are), etc. Those are all of various efficiency and should all be considered with a lot of caution, although they're commonly used and can work. Really, the most meaningful and safe ways to read people IMO are to form associative reads and to read people based on logical point of view.

    3 and 4: Included in 1 and 2, respectively.

    5. Deathworlds says effort is NAI, and he is correct imo (unless a player has a specific meta, an habit of doing X thing as Y alignment, like putting much more effort as scum or as town for example, and even that is a debatable tell). There's another NAI thing: activity. People can be inactive for tons of reasons, and 90 % of people getting called out for "scummy lurking" or the like have legitimate real life or other non game related reasons. It doesn't mean they are town 90 % of the time, simply that when you play FM, you have to accept that not everyone can be online all the time, and that unexpected circumstances can happen. Of course, that doesn't mean hard inactivity is ok; however, that's grounds for replacement by the host, not for lynch because "the guy lurks", at least not without a PoE argument (Process of Elimination, i.e. putting everyone in a list and removing the people you think are town from it, and then lynching from that list).

    6. By having good reads and pushing them correctly. That tends to fail if my pushes are badly executed or executed on the wrong players, though, so this is an aspect of my play I need to improve with another strategy.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Lawyer View Post
    Besides your lamp and your refridgerators, do you find anyone else suspicious?
    Quote Originally Posted by oliverz144 View Post
    it looks like many, e.g. MM and lag, suffered under the influence of paopan. However there is a victim: frinckles. He left the path of rationality and fully dived into the parallel reality of baby shark, king shark, and soviet union pizzas.
    Spoiler : The meaning of life :

  7. ISO #7

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    >If you are deceived, the fault is as much that you are bad as they are good. In many cases, you must accept being deceived in order to be deceived.
    >Resist deception, but you may not be overly skeptical. If you mistrust every word everyone says, doubt will consume you and your team. Your time is limited by every day's end and every night.
    >Strike a balance between the two by evaluating the information you have. At the start, assumptions are necessary, and you will be deceived and you may not find the evils. By the end, your assumptions will hurt you, and if you are still led by them you will lose.
    ::
    >Communicate, but also remember communication is a transmission of thought. Communicate with a purpose. Your words will either confuse or convince them. For example, if you find a singular post from a player that is only slightly odd, but you think the player on the whole is a town, commenting on it will paint them as scum. Consider refraining from posting this altogether if you are town, consider posting this if you are evil.
    >Not communicating at all is not an option. As an evil, you give up your power of influence, and as a town you await execution.
    ::
    >Evaluate motives.
    ::
    >Effort is alignment indicative. Find out what sort of effort they put in. Players who are lower in effort tend to be evil, as evils will need to watch their wording even harder. A likely consequence is that they post less. Evils also need to fake scumhunting, they will make fake reads that lack substance (because there is none) or they will make fake reads that lack effort.
    >Put forth your own effort. In your first game you will not likely know what to do, but if you do nothing you are more likely to lose.

  8. ISO #8

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dallarian View Post
    Great thread! I already find it valuable source of information.
    Keep it going.

    Thank you very much.
    UwU

    myadvice is.... say uwu a lot.

    MADMAD
    Last edited by theoneceko; June 17th, 2020 at 08:15 PM.

  9. ISO #9

  10. ISO #10

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    I think new players should try to adopt a reserved approach to playing FM. Not to say that you should be posting as little as possible, you should always post when you feel like you have something important to say. The game culture currently swings into a lot of little micro posts which is incredibly tedious/annoying to keep up with. Think of your posts as very valuable, make them count. Explore your thoughts fully and try to convey it as fleshed out in your post as you can (without giving out information you don't want to give out of course). Don't fall into the trap of slinging low effort micro posts all the time because I believe it encourages bad habits.
    Last edited by rumox; June 18th, 2020 at 06:48 PM.

  11. ISO #11

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    honestly justhave fun y'all. the advice is nice, but this is the most text a player ever had to read in a game before they even pressed a button. imo, experience is the best teacher. also,just read finishedgames in the archives if u wanna kno wat dese NOOBSare talking about.uWu

  12. ISO #12

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by rumox View Post
    I think new players should try to adopt a reserved approach to playing FM. Not to say that you should be posting as little as possible, you should always post when you feel like you have something important to say. The game culture currently swings into a lot of little micro posts which is incredibly tedious/annoying to keep up with. Think of your posts as very valuable, make them count. Explore your thoughts fully and try to convey it as fleshed out in your post as you can (without giving out information you don't want to give out of course). Don't fall into the trap of slinging low effort micro posts all the time because I believe it encourages bad habits.
    Uh, I mean... don't feel obligated to post 75 times a game day like some people do, but DO feel obligated to post more than 5 times a game day, else you're just not participating lol, and that's not fun for anyone. Putting as much content as you can in your posts is a good thing, though.
    Quote Originally Posted by theoneceko View Post
    honestly justhave fun y'all. the advice is nice, but this is the most text a player ever had to read in a game before they even pressed a button. imo, experience is the best teacher. also,just read finishedgames in the archives if u wanna kno wat dese NOOBSare talking about.uWu
    Definetly. The kind of advice we give here is to help people have fun in their games because they will not be lost and will improve their game. It doesn't change the ultimate goal of FM, though, which is to have fun (within the rules' limit, of course). Good post, ceko.
    uwu?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Lawyer View Post
    Besides your lamp and your refridgerators, do you find anyone else suspicious?
    Quote Originally Posted by oliverz144 View Post
    it looks like many, e.g. MM and lag, suffered under the influence of paopan. However there is a victim: frinckles. He left the path of rationality and fully dived into the parallel reality of baby shark, king shark, and soviet union pizzas.
    Spoiler : The meaning of life :

  13. ISO #13

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marshmallow Marshall View Post
    Uh, I mean... don't feel obligated to post 75 times a game day like some people do, but DO feel obligated to post more than 5 times a game day, else you're just not participating lol, and that's not fun for anyone. Putting as much content as you can in your posts is a good thing, though.


    Definetly. The kind of advice we give here is to help people have fun in their games because they will not be lost and will improve their game. It doesn't change the ultimate goal of FM, though, which is to have fun (within the rules' limit, of course). Good post, ceko.
    uwu?
    OwO!!!
    nuzzlesx3. UwU!!!

  14. ISO #14

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by theoneceko View Post
    honestly justhave fun y'all. the advice is nice, but this is the most text a player ever had to read in a game before they even pressed a button. imo, experience is the best teacher. also,just read finishedgames in the archives if u wanna kno wat dese NOOBSare talking about.uWu
    Lol yep experience is 100% the best teacher

    Make sure to look at the really experienced people like MM, Kovath, Cucho, Ganelon, or SJ when you play (i probably forgot someone again). They all have their unique sort of spin on things that makes it very good to learn from all of them.

  15. ISO #15

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Varcron View Post
    Lol yep experience is 100% the best teacher

    Make sure to look at the really experienced people like MM, Kovath, Cucho, Ganelon, or SJ when you play (i probably forgot someone again). They all have their unique sort of spin on things that makes it very good to learn from all of them.
    OH I forgot pringles smh, his scum games are stuff of legend.

  16. ISO #16

  17. ISO #17

  18. ISO #18

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marshmallow Marshall View Post
    Uh, I mean... don't feel obligated to post 75 times a game day like some people do, but DO feel obligated to post more than 5 times a game day, else you're just not participating lol, and that's not fun for anyone. Putting as much content as you can in your posts is a good thing, though.
    OK MM is Mafia here. Sorry dude you just outed your self.
    Do Not open this spoiler under any condition!!!!!!!
    Spoiler : :
    WHY CANT YOU FOLLOW SIMPLE DIRECTIONS?
    YOU HAVE JUST CAUSED THE END OF ALL MANKIND!!!!!!

    <a href=https://www.sc2mafia.com/forum/signaturepics/sigpic27614_1.gif target=_blank>https://www.sc2mafia.com/forum/signat...pic27614_1.gif</a>

  19. ISO #19

    Re: Scumreading and Townreading. Your thoughts, tips and guidance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike View Post
    OK MM is Mafia here. Sorry dude you just outed your self.
    Oh god lol, my meta changed since then. Welcome back :P
    Quote Originally Posted by The Lawyer View Post
    Besides your lamp and your refridgerators, do you find anyone else suspicious?
    Quote Originally Posted by oliverz144 View Post
    it looks like many, e.g. MM and lag, suffered under the influence of paopan. However there is a victim: frinckles. He left the path of rationality and fully dived into the parallel reality of baby shark, king shark, and soviet union pizzas.
    Spoiler : The meaning of life :

 

 

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