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Sanderson Elimination: Questions & Answers and Game Meta Discussion


Metacognition

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20 minutes ago, MonsterMetroid said:

Ok so my idea is this. I have learned a ton already from various people and just playing, I have learned some things from Orlok, Kas, Alvron, and others (others please dont kill me). But I have learned through observation or asking very specific questions abotu why they do something. I think there is a way to make it so that we could help develop the meta, get new people involved and have fun at the same time.

And that way is through mentor Games! You pair newer or brand new players with a single mentor, this mentor would only have the one person they were with and would not be in charge of modding the game in any way either because we want the trainee to learn how to recognize patterns, or logic fallacies, or one of the other aspects of the game. The pair would communicate through either a doc or PM's (or maybe even discord) and analyze posts and such. I could see this working really well with anonymous accounts as a two person team with hopefully the mentor not just taking over, Or just a sort of mentor pokemon battle where they give advice and teach but leave the actual playing to the trainees.

I know I would personally enjoy this because I see how people talk about Wilson never being tricked in docs, I have observed Orlok dissect things into tiny little pieces.   And I have heard stories about players I have never heard of except just in passing in the AG game.

I know this would not be an easy suggestion and it could be controversial based on the mentor/mentee pairings and I certainly don't know all that it would take to make this work, but I do know it would be fun :D

I think that this is a really cool Idea. Though I have one suggestion, What if instead of making just a mentoring program, it was a buddy system. My reasoning is that this way it provides a way for experienced players to learn from each other. It also makes it more approachable. If someone has been playing for a while, they may not be a new player, but they may not feel like they have a grip on the game and they feel like they could benefit from an opportunity to learn. On the logistical side, this gets rid of having to distinguish what makes a player experienced.

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1 hour ago, Elenion said:

@MonsterMetroid @MacThorstenson We actually have had a game similar to this already: QF22. Everyone was paired with another player, and one of them posted and voted during the day while the other posted and voted during the night. Pairs were anonymous, but when a player died their partner died as well.

I played in that one as well. The basic format worked well enough, though if you base something on that, it should probably be considered to allow the pairs to both talk during the Day and Night, as I think being able to talk in thread for only a portion of the time felt somewhat limiting. Elenion (who happened to be my partner in that game) was active, luckily, but if you are an active player and your partner isn't, I can imagine it to be somewhat frustrating.

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I played on the Elim team for QF22 and I remember it being a bit annoying to have to be the Night player. During the Night turns, there wasn’t really any discussion, so it made it extremely boring for any Night players. Additionally, the fact that the Elims could essentially kill two players every turn made the game rather unbalanced.

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17 minutes ago, Straw said:

I played on the Elim team for QF22 and I remember it being a bit annoying to have to be the Night player. During the Night turns, there wasn’t really any discussion, so it made it extremely boring for any Night players. Additionally, the fact that the Elims could essentially kill two players every turn made the game rather unbalanced.

Another balance problem was caused by having Day and Night players. I remember I was a villager that game, and I was super suspicious of a Night player who turned out to be evil. Unfortunately, no one could vote for any night-players, and my partner didn't have a role that could target them. It was very frustrating, especially since the Day-Night pairs weren't revealed until death.Along with some balance issues, it let the evil team win that game easily. Still, I can see a buddy system be used to better effect.

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10 hours ago, MonsterMetroid said:

I see how people talk about Wilson never being tricked in docs

Curious. Not exactly true, but interesting.

As for the idea, I like it. Though this talk of QF22, I think, is not what you meant. Plus, account sharing isn't going to be an option even with the anonymous accounts. But a mentor had some interesting possibilities. 

Are you meaning a game built around this as a mechanic, or more just in general? Like new player signs up, we toss a number of the R&R players named in a hat and choose one, and that person kind of leads that new player through the game. Answering questions, giving pointers, etc. If this, I think it has serious potential.

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7 hours ago, little wilson said:

Are you meaning a game built around this as a mechanic, or more just in general? Like new player signs up, we toss a number of the R&R players named in a hat and choose one, and that person kind of leads that new player through the game. Answering questions, giving pointers, etc. If this, I think it has serious potential.

Hey @little wilson thanks for liking the idea :)

Either way honestly, I meant as a game built around a mechanic since it would be a time commitment. But If some mentors were willing I think the second has a lot of promise! I think by necessitation of fairness the mentor would have to abstain from spec docs for that game so they can't draw from anything besides what the mentee can see if that makes sense. Which would mean that they would play less, but I trust that you guys can find the balance.

But yeah in general I think the chance of being able to play through a game with someone and have them ask me " A lot of people suspect _____ this cycle, what do you think? Why do you think that? This is what I think and why." would be a great way to help those that want to improve whether they are brand new or a bit older.

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8 hours ago, little wilson said:

Curious. Not exactly true, but interesting.

As for the idea, I like it. Though this talk of QF22, I think, is not what you meant. Plus, account sharing isn't going to be an option even with the anonymous accounts. But a mentor had some interesting possibilities. 

Are you meaning a game built around this as a mechanic, or more just in general? Like new player signs up, we toss a number of the R&R players named in a hat and choose one, and that person kind of leads that new player through the game. Answering questions, giving pointers, etc. If this, I think it has serious potential.

I think the way it would best work is for the new player to get the anonymous account (or not; it honestly doesn't really matter if they're anonymous or not) and the mentors are assigned to a new player and get a PM set up with them. It's not known who has which mentor (if mentors are even known at all and don't sign up through PMing the GM) so that elims don't kill based on that information. While I don't think the game has to be based around that, I wouldn't give it too many different or weird mechanics, because a relatively standard game would do better for teaching. 

The thing I'd wonder about, mostly, is the cutoff - what ratio of "old players" to "new players" do we have, here? I'm not sure how well that'd work, honestly. 

And regarding being undeceived in docs, I expect that's a reference to discussing how your playstyle (and more specifically your old one) revolved around PMs, and that you're good at catching eliminators in them. (Sometimes. :P)

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8 hours ago, little wilson said:

Curious. Not exactly true, but interesting.

As for the idea, I like it. Though this talk of QF22, I think, is not what you meant. Plus, account sharing isn't going to be an option even with the anonymous accounts. But a mentor had some interesting possibilities. 

Are you meaning a game built around this as a mechanic, or more just in general? Like new player signs up, we toss a number of the R&R players named in a hat and choose one, and that person kind of leads that new player through the game. Answering questions, giving pointers, etc. If this, I think it has serious potential.

What exactly are R&R players? I’ve heard the term used before, but I don’t know what it means.

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1 hour ago, Elbereth said:

The thing I'd wonder about, mostly, is the cutoff - what ratio of "old players" to "new players" do we have, here? I'm not sure how well that'd work, honestly. 

This is the thing I'm not sure of either, I know I personally would love to participate. But maybe it could be just based on a signup waitlist.

As for the mentors I was thinking the Mods/GM's could nominate people that are eligible to mentor for their exceptional play and the community votes on them or vice versa.

Another option is that perhaps much like the vouchers for games that were given out at AG4 there could be vouchers that you could win for participation to be mentored by someone.

Sorry just throwing a lot of ideas around I really dont know enough about the community as a whole yet to make very detailed suggestions. But I do think that the idea would be worth figuring out the details

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Mafiascum has something called newbie games, where they get an experienced player to explain the game to new players (anybody who's played less than a certain number of games in mafiascum, regardless of experience level in other places). If we have games where there's a small number of dedicated mentors compared to newbies, we could just put a blanket ban on killing the mentors for the first two cycles. It's a more heavy-handed solution, but it'll ensure that the mentor tays alive long enough to give out some advice.

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6 hours ago, Arraenae said:

Mafiascum has something called newbie games, where they get an experienced player to explain the game to new players (anybody who's played less than a certain number of games in mafiascum, regardless of experience level in other places). If we have games where there's a small number of dedicated mentors compared to newbies, we could just put a blanket ban on killing the mentors for the first two cycles. It's a more heavy-handed solution, but it'll ensure that the mentor tays alive long enough to give out some advice.

Also they also had that hydra game. Which was similar to the aforementioned QF that we were paired in as I recall.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm disappointed right now. This community is usually very, very welcoming to new players. We generally give them multiple cycles of game play, even if they're being a little suspicious. (There are a few exceptions to that rule, but not many). This is good. I fully support this. So why am I disappointed?

New players come in all shapes and sizes and backgrounds. Some are brand new to this forum. Some have been on this forum for years but only recently found SE. Some have played mafia in real life. Some have played it online. Some have never played it at all. Some were pulled in by friends/family who play here. Some don't know anyone.

There is a certain subset of "new" players who we as a community do not welcome. In fact, we do quite the opposite, and it ends up sending many of these new players running away from SE permanently.

This subset of new players are people who once played SE, over a year ago (sometimes a couple years) but left. They are no more familiar with the current meta than other new players. They know about as many people as many new players. They are about as familiar with the game as some new players who come from other online mafia forums. But they are not treated like other new players. Just look at the most recent example: @Bort. The last game he actually played before he recently returned was AG2. That was over 2 years ago. He was killed within the first two cycles of both these recent games.

Bort isn't the only one either. I've seen a number of people return, giving SE another shot because they have time and remember how fun it once was, and they get almost completely ignored in the game, killed, and then disappear for good. I can't really blame them. I remember how things used to be and what they're remembering. The games are very different now, and they'll never go back to how they used to be, and that's fine. I don't think those prodigal son players expect the games to be exactly as they left. I'm sure they know things have changed. They expect not to know hardly anyone. But they're still getting their feet under them, just like any other new player, and getting reoriented to the community and the games. Yet they're treated like they never left and when they do something that an R&R player wouldn't do, they're killed, usually early in the game, before they have a chance to readjust. This might happen for a couple of games in a row. And then, they leave.

What if you leave for a year? The only way to stay connected to this community should not be to never leave after the first welcome. That's not maintainable. I want these games to be welcoming to everyone. Not just people who have never, ever played here before. Any ideas on how we do that?

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Thanks for bringing this up @little wilson

It does feel rather crappy to come back to SE, then just get immediately killed off, especially for, as far as I can see, no good reason. Hell, in the LG, I even removed my vote from someone in the first cycle because it was their first game. And how am I treated? A lynch mob forms on me for wanting to give others a chance to play, and not pushing for a first cycle death.

Then, when I get saved by some miracle (still unsure what happened there), I get offed that night by the eliminators.

Thanks guys, way to make someone feel welcome :P

The QF is less of a concern because it is a quick game, so I expect people to die off quickly in that one. An extra cycle or two would have been appreciated.

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I hope you stick around to play more, Bort.

And I want to be clear that I'm not just talking about Bort. The specifics of his deaths are not relevant. He is simply the latest in a long line of people who have returned and experienced this, so he made an easy example to point to. But this problem is bigger than just Bort and these two games, so I'd prefer not to focus on them (plus, they're currently running so we really shouldn't). But this general issue is definitely something we should discuss so we can fix it.

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Hm. Point.

Personally, I find it hard to keep track of everyone, and I guess subconsciously I identify "new players" by a low content count. But that's not a very good marker, for a great many reasons. Would it be sensible to have some way to identify new players?

Regardless, I reckon we all ought to try a little bit harder to welcome returning players, yep. It's certainly an honest mistake to treat a returning player like a regular player, but so long as we are all intentional in how we deal with this, future instances of the issue should not be very difficult to prevent.

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4 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

Personally, I find it hard to keep track of everyone, and I guess subconsciously I identify "new players" by a low content count. But that's not a very good marker, for a great many reasons. Would it be sensible to have some way to identify new players?

Regardless, I reckon we all ought to try a little bit harder to welcome returning players, yep. It's certainly an honest mistake to treat a returning player like a regular player, but so long as we are all intentional in how we deal with this, future instances of the issue should not be very difficult to prevent.

I agree with this.

I don't think it'be good to make an actual rule to not kill/lynch a new/returning player D1, but I also think most of us will avoid doing so if we realize whoever is in the cross-hairs is new or returning. I mention that part about knowing, because in the example of Bort, I hadn't realized he was someone returning from an absence.

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17 minutes ago, randuir said:

I agree with this.

I don't think it'be good to make an actual rule to not kill/lynch a new/returning player D1, but I also think most of us will avoid doing so if we realize whoever is in the cross-hairs is new or returning. I mention that part about knowing, because in the example of Bort, I hadn't realized he was someone returning from an absence.

I'll tell you what might be one of the causes of this - people repeatedly changing their name and avatar on here. When this happens we don't have any way of knowing who is who.

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2 hours ago, randuir said:

 I mention that part about knowing, because in the example of Bort, I hadn't realized he was someone returning from an absence.

This strikes me as something interesting, and maybe the root of the issue here. I'd have thought that it would be fairly easy to recognize that they're not a regular and recurring player if only because we're not familiar with their name and profile pic. Since clearly that's not what happened with Bort, it shows that we're measuring newness by some other metric: uncertainty in posts and less logical analysis. Most newbies take a few cycles of watching to catch on, and we know that most of what happens before that is flailing around in the dark, so we're more forgiving if they accidentally whack someone in the head. But we're also less likely to consider players who don't flail to be new. Take the AG4, for example, where a lot of people doubted that Fifth Scholar (Ivory Dragonfly) was new. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, despite proclaiming his inexperience, so how could he be new? Turned out that he'd just read previous games before, so he had an idea of how things were supposed to go. At the same time, Fifth made several mistakes more common to newbies, such as trusting people just because they roleclaimed. It seems obvious to any regular and recurring player, but usually it's something that has to be learned firsthand.

I think returning players fall into a similar gap. They've played SE before, so they mostly know how things are supposed to go. That means less flailing, so we don't recognize them as new. However, they won't know some things that are obvious to regular and recurring players, and will make mistakes that offend the sensibilities of our current meta, because they don't know what our current meta is. But we judge them as if they do. That's where our problem lies: returning players lack the markers of obviously new players, so they don't trigger the protective instincts we reserve for newbies. That leads to us treating them like regular and recurring players when they lack the ability and knowledge base of current regular and recurring players.

I don't know if there's a solution beyond pointing out that they're returning, not recurring. Still, that seems like a good place to start.

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On 4/18/2018 at 10:18 AM, little wilson said:

I want these games to be welcoming to everyone. Not just people who have never, ever played here before. Any ideas on how we do that?

I just discovered this discussion and thought I should reply. Honestly, I think the best idea we have for welcoming new and old players alike is one that we just tried and was (IMO) incredibly successful: Anonymous games. 

In Anonymous games (what did we abbreviate that too again? AG=Anniversary Game, so it wasn’t that) everybody is on the same level whether new, old, regular, or returning after a long absence. So my advice would be allow more anon games. 

Now obviously there is a lot more to Anon games than just this one issue, so this is something the mods and/or site admins would have to discuss whether or not adding more anon games would be worthwhile. 

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It's....difficult...to allow more anon games. I want to do more, but we can only ever have one going at a time, since we only have enough accounts for 1 set of players (unless we have smaller games). Right now, the goal is to get up to 6 games in a year, but for this first year where we're still getting our feet under us with them and the timing and stuff, we'll probably only have 4-5. Which I think is fine.

The other thing is that the anonymous games, at least these first few, require a lot of moderation. Far, far more than regular games. Going straight from one anon game to another with no break would get tiring after a while.

The abbreviation, by the way, is AN.

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  • 1 month later...

@Wyrmhero @randuir @_Stick_ @TheMightyLopen @MonsterMetroid & @Fifth Scholar, reminder that each of you have passes you can give out to GMs for them to run their Non-Sanderson game.  There are currently three games needing a pass.
Jondesu with Lord of the Rings long game.
El and Wilson with a rerun of LG18 and LG33.
And finally my humble little QF Blackout involving Zombies.

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