Long Game 35: L35 Miserables

[little wilson]

Long post incoming

First, let me just say that we need to learn how to play with neutrals. By neutrals, I don't mean village- or elim-aligned neutrals. I mean true neutrals. The kind who can help anyone and still win. Aman was the only villager vocal about a pro-neutral strategy from the beginning of the game. All the other villagers were content to either ignore us or antagonize us by wanting to control us because they refused to even attempt to work civilly with us. Both of these are terrible neutral strategies. Really. They're bad. Why are they bad? Let me count the ways.

Ignoring Neutrals
Just because someone doesn't share your alignment doesn't mean you can't work with them. Especially if their alignment is neutral. And keep in mind: working with someone does not mean that you trust them. Paranoia is healthy in these games. Well, to a certain degree, but I digress. The point is that just because you are ignoring them doesn't mean your opponent is ignoring them, and if you ignore them and your opponent doesn't, the neutrals will end up helping your opponent. Not because they don't want to help you, but because they don't know how to help you because you're ignoring them! From their perspective, it's like they don't even exist to you. How are they supposed to help someone who acts like they don't exist? And why would they feel the compunction to help you either?

Antagonizing Neutrals
Nobody likes to feel controlled. When you antagonize someone, if they have a chance to work against you without you learning about it, they'll jump on it. Without hesitation, usually. Therefore, antagonizing neutrals is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very act of trying to control them because you refuse to work with them without exerting power over them makes them more likely to help your enemy because now they're just pissed at you. Not exactly ideal.

 

So, what happened this game?

Well, early-game, we obviously wanted to be in contact with both sides, so we knew how to help both sides. Making deals and what-not. The elims took a bit to reach out to us, though, and when they did, they really sent the wrong person to do it. I mentioned this already, but Yitzi wanted leverage (aka blackmail) over the neutrals they worked with. So...control. Given the anti-neutral sentiment in the thread, we were fairly on edge already. And we were already thinking that Rand was evil (which was wrong, obviously), and now with another anti-neutral admitting to being an eliminator, it sure looked to us like the eliminators were taking an anti-neutral stance in the thread to antagonize the neutrals against the village and make us more likely to help the eliminators.

This actually isn't a bad plan, assuming the neutrals don't realize what's going on. And if they're the type of players to cave to leverage. Unfortunately, this particular group of neutrals was definitely not the type of players you approach and try to get leverage on. Joe, Orlok, El, and I do not respond well to blackmail (and I think everyone knows that you shouldn't try to blackmail Stink  ). Indeed, our reaction to Yitzi reaching out to us and the belief that Rand was evil was that we didn't really have any desire to help a Rand/Yitzi team. We wanted them dead, and fast. Orlok and I decided that even if it meant we lost, we wanted to make a point that antagonizing neutrals was not the way to do things.

We approached Aman and Rae and briefed them on what was going, asking if they wanted to know the name of the eliminator trying to get leverage over us. Aman was hesitant, but ultimately told us to tell him, because allowing players to control other players isn't cool. He'd already expressed suspicion of Yitzi, and was able to play off his knowledge as just that suspicion growing. Sorry, eliminators, for giving up Yitzi. Really.

Then both Rand and Aman died the following night. This was unfortunate for three reasons: one, Aman was going to be the driving force for a Joe lynch in exchange for El protecting Rae that same night, two: Aman was the most vocal pro-neutral villager in a game filled with anti-neutral villagers, and three: Rand wasn't evil. Oops.

But surely Len is. He's also been anti-neutral, and the original N1 kill on Ecth doesn't make sense, unless Len is evil and remembers the last time they were on opposite teams, when he had to drop out of the game because he'd seen Ecth in the evil doc. Very meta. Also very wrong. Sorry, Len.

It was at this point in time that the neutrals went quiet. I don't really know why the others did but for me, I just kind of lost all motivation to be involved. PMs stopped going up nightly, so I didn't have that connection to the other neutrals, and the only anti-neutral player alive was Drake and it was obvious that he was village. Everyone else was content to just ignore us. No one tried to engage us in the game. And the game started to falter and drag, until Joe finally came in and voted on himself in an attempt to drive discussion.

And this is where things really shifted for me. Obviously the village didn't know that we'd given up Yitzi, but multiple villagers had commented up to that point that I at least had been a very pro-village neutral. Which was true. Yet now the village is suddenly very anti-me. Heaven forbid I try to get my win con when I've tried to help the village and now the remaining villagers refuse to help me win unless I help them more. Some people said that a mislynch would be terrible for the village, and while that was true, we'd suggested a Joe lynch earlier in the game, but it was shot down because everyone wanted information lynches (which all turned out to be mislynches, mind you). So am I just supposed to lose because the village wants to handle their own mislynches on villagers? I think not. Also, most of the village was saying "We've only lynched one eliminator so far; we can't lynch someone we know isn't an eliminator! Help us find another couple eliminators and then we'll help you lynch Joe!" and you have no idea how close I came to being like "Guess what? The only reason you've even lynched a single eliminator is because of me." But that wasn't the deal we'd made with Aman, and it undoubtedly would've ticked the elims off and probably would've resulted in Orlok dying in the night, so I showed some restraint. So Orlok dealt with that.

That said, I did understand that the living villagers had no reason to just accept our word for the help we'd already given the village, which is why I hinted at some more information I could give the village in exchange for that lynch, since the counterlynch to Joe was the original N1 kill before the switch. I figured that information would not only help with Joe's initial point - driving discussion in an attempt to get a different lynch - but would also get the village behind the Joe lynch. But no one caught that offer.

Araris contacted me N6 when PMs came back up, asking me to vote for Flash D8. I agreed. Not only had I given my word, but I'd had a feeling Araris was evil, and I liked the idea of working with him. I mentioned this PM and subsequent request to Orlok and El, and while we discussed this, I realized that I had no desire to help the village now (sorry, Rae and Aman. Especially Aman). While some of them kind of helped with the Joe lynch, they'd made it extremely difficult and despite the outcry against that lynch, no one really talked about other suspicions. It was all just "We can't lynch Joe!" So it didn't really feel like they were even trying to solve the game.

The next day, I mentioned the information offer from the day before, and finally Flash caught it and started asking about. But it was a little late. By the time I saw his question, 3 hours after he'd asked it, it was 4-5 hours before the end of the cycle. I didn't want to screw with the mislynch that turn because that's just mean, so I looked at the votes and who they were from. 6 votes and I was pretty certain 4 of them wouldn't be online before rollover to change it. So I revealed the info about N1 and Ecth, partly to kind of troll the village just a bit.

Araris contacted Orlok the next night with his "blackmail" PM, but Orlok had given permission for it, as it was the only way to get out of the agreement he'd made with Seonid. And then PMs went down once again for D8. The day I'm supposed to vote for Flash.

Problem: Flash was gunning for Araris. While Araris had assured me they had control of the lynch, I know they had to be feeling a little bit of pressure, and then I had a brilliant idea: confessing that the eliminators called me debt in and then voting for Araris, making it seem like the eliminators asked me to vote for Araris, and therefore, Araris is village. I actually soundboarded it off Aonar, because I wasn't sure I should actually do it. I knew it would liven things up and would at least cause Flash to second guess himself heavily, which is all ultimately why I did it. I wanted a good last cycle, and trolling Flash would be hilarious for me (sorry). So I did it.

I was genuinely worried too, because PMs are down and therefore, the eliminators have no idea what's going on in my head. Nor do the other active neutrals. But I was more worried about the eliminators. I basically realized that I was betting heavily on Araris knowing that I wouldn't go back on my word. It doesn't look like he mentioned that in the doc, but he did know that I was trolling, which is the most important thing. And Stick, you played on that beautifully. Araris kind of hit the "Flash must be evil" bit a little too hard, but your responses had me dying. It was so funny. And then Orlok and El joined in, and it was just great. I accused them of blatantly trolling, saying that I wasn't doing any such thing, which was true. I was subtly trolling.

Drake's post, though, was the cherry on top for me:

Quote

If we want to go full-on tinfoil, the eliminators could have asked Wilson to do this to deflect the lynch away from Araris. It would be an utterly effective way to stop us from lynching an eliminator, and if Wilson were online near the end, she could even switch her vote away from Araris and onto the villager of choice.

On the other hand, there are several reasons that this is unlikely. The first is Occam's razor. And the second is that I'm not sure the eliminators would be quite that devious in the way they call in their favor. There's a pretty good chance that they can control the lynch through raw force, so I doubt they would feel the pressure that is necessary to come up with a plan like this. Plus, my gut says Wilson is telling the truth about this. She's following the terms of the deal she struck to the letter.

And, honestly, if this is all some elaborate gambit, the eliminators flat-out deserve to win.

It's not bad logic. It just....assumes that I'm not acting of my own volition, which I was. Also, I was telling the truth. I never said they'd told me to vote for Araris. Not once. Go back and look. As for following the terms of the deal to the letter.....hm. I think so? Though it's "to the letter and plus some." Worth it, though, for a confusing finish. I'm content with that end.

 

A few final comments:

In glancing over the evil doc, I noticed that in my attempt to phish out Yitzi, I was 3 for 3 in contacting elims. For the villagers who don't know about this, Yitzi contacted Joe and wanted to know my role, and Joe PMed me asking permission to tell Yitzi. As I was writing the PM giving him permission, Yitzi PMed Joe, saying he wanted leverage, so Joe replied to me, saying that he'd changed his mind because he'd be Yitzi's leverage and he didn't want to be anyone's leverage. I understood, but I wanted to know who the eliminator was in contact with Joe. So I looked at who was online, knowing that that PM took place in the last 10 minutes. And I narrowed it down to three people: Yitzi, Stick and Arin. I'm fairly amused now...

@randuir -

Quote

I already said something like this in the thread, but it was probably for the best I got taken out here. Too much suspicion on me that was going to result in me getting mis-lynched when we couldn’t afford to have that happen. Also, maybe now Wilson feels obliged to help the village ferret out an actual elim.

Next game with Neutrals, I really need to watch myself more. I thought my initial conclusion made complete sense. Only, it only make sense did if you assume everyone would play optimally, and I remember telling Yitzi several times that an assumption like that isn’t going to end well. I should learn to take my own advice.

First, I was neutral. I don't need to be obliged to do anything, certainly not for someone who was so pointlessly anti-my-alignment. If this were Aman, sure. Or even Rae. But none of the other villagers did a single thing to make me be obliged to do a single thing for them, least of all you. Oh, also: Yitzi. You're welcome, Rand.

Second, what you define as "optimal play" I define as "suboptimal" because in the grand scheme of things, true optimal play would change the metagame enough that it would be toxic for 17th Shard and this subforum would be promptly shut down. There are many forums where Win First Above All Else playstyles are the norm, and those who play to win can have uber amounts of fun. Forums that focus on casual and fun play where everyone can have fun regardless of if they are winning or not are far less common. Be careful what playstyles you promote as the "best ones" for people to use, because it has a larger effect than you might think. You're not the one who will have to go to the admins to shut the games down when they get too toxic. I am. I don't want to do that.

[Yitzi2]

I think my idea of "leverage" was less "blackmail" and more "a guarantee to prevent betrayal", but apparently I did not make that sufficiently clear.

18 minutes ago, little wilson said:

Second, what you define as "optimal play" I define as "suboptimal" because in the grand scheme of things, true optimal play would change the metagame enough that it would be toxic for 17th Shard and this subforum would be promptly shut down. There are many forums where Win First Above All Else playstyles are the norm, and those who play to win can have uber amounts of fun. Forums that focus on casual and fun play where everyone can have fun regardless of if they are winning or not are far less common. Be careful what playstyles you promote as the "best ones" for people to use, because it has a larger effect than you might think. You're not the one who will have to go to the admins to shut the games down when they get too toxic. I am. I don't want to do that.

As someone still fairly new to SE, I have to ask: What makes something toxic and therefore suboptimal, as opposed to simply being the way the game is played?

Edited July 24, 2017 by Yitzi2

[little wilson]

1 minute ago, Yitzi2 said:

I think my idea of "leverage" was less "blackmail" and more "a guarantee to prevent betrayal", but apparently I did not make that sufficiently clear.

As someone still fairly new to SE, I have to ask: What makes something toxic and therefore suboptimal, as opposed to simply being the way the game is played?

Ah. That's still borderline blackmail, because guaranteeing a betrayal prevention limits that player's ability to do certain things, should they decide to. But it's really just splitting hairs at that point. Some players would be fine with it, some players wouldn't be. I'm a take-me-at-my-word sort of person. If I say I'll do something, I'll do it. But I like to have total control over what I ultimately choose to do. If someone is holding something over me to make sure I hold to my word, I just get irritated.

Hm. That's hard to define completely. Win First playstyles hinge on doing all you can to get the win for your team. While this doesn't always result in a dictatorship arising, it does frequently enough that it's a problem. Because think about it: if you're playing to win, and you're a guaranteed safe role and have a contact that can protect you, wouldn't it be a good idea to start leading the village? Have people start roleclaiming to you? Start directing their actions? From there, it's only a small step to "this person isn't listening to me, let's kill them because they could be evil because obviously, the evil team won't want to listen to me." And then you get people feeling forced to do what you say, lest they die. And....you might as well be playing for everyone at that point for how little control they have over what they do.

While it might be possible to play a Win First playstyle in a non-toxic way, I'm unconvinced. I think after a good dozen games of using it, eventually, you'd be in a position where you could abuse it and would.

Most other playstyles can be used either good or bad. Namely very aggressive playstyles. These tend to coincide with competitive playstyles, and when that happens, it's really easy for things to get toxic. It's also really easy to miss at the start, because it's tonal. It's the difference between thinking a person is suspicious and accusing them with logical arguments and then perhaps debating with them, and tunneling on a person, picking every single thing they say apart and kind of attacking them. This isn't to say that tunneling is inherently aggressive and competitive, though it often can be.

It's not a problem when it's only one person doing it. The problem is when others join them, because then it starts compounding and effects the overall tone of the games. And it sucks the fun out of the games because only the people who play to win will be having fun. Everyone else will just be like "Why did I sign up for this again?" and go inactive because what's the point of playing a game if you're not having fun?

I view the metagame tone as a sort of pendulum. On one side of the swing is Casual Fun and on the other is Aggressive Competition. When these games first came into existence back in January 2014, the pendulum swung between Casual Fun and the middle zone. Sometime between LG12 and LG15, though, the pendulum starting moving away from Casual Fun bit by bit. By LG15, it was swinging almost entirely in the middle zone. Sometimes on the Casual Fun side, sometimes on the Aggressive Competition side. And for the next year, it shifted in very tiny increments closer to Aggressive Competition. A year ago, the tone in the games was very different than it had been 2 years prior. And I started to get a bit worried. For the next couple months, I tried various things to try to shift it, but nothing worked. I alone could do very little.

So I talked to some other players. Aman was one of the the main people I talked to. He used an aggressive and competitive playstyle that wasn't inherently bad, but there were certain other players who were mimicking him. The problem was that they didn't know how to play it well, so were causing issues. In our own various ways, we started making a concerted effort to fix the tone of the games. Aman focused on RP, encouraging that through his games, and that helped tremendously. I completely dropped my previous super-analytical, essay-writing playstyle for a new casual playstyle (though occasionally the old one bleeds through). When Hero came back for the AG, he changed the Contribution Crusade, so it focused on contacting inactives and inviting them back into the game, letting them know they were missed, which helped include everyone so there were more chances of fun. I can't even remember everything we tried, but ultimately, it worked. Little by little, that pendulum swung away from Aggressive Competition and closer to Casual Fun. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that it's back to the middle zone, but it got close.

Lately, I've seen some red flag comments that makes me feel there's another aggressive shift coming on, though. Which worries me even more, because I'm not sure how much it'll take to lose the ground we've gained in the last 9 months, and before then, we were only about 3-5 months away from losing the games, had that trend continued.

More to the point for this forum, however, looking beyond the games, 17th Shard is forum where the members generally care about each other. Flaming is almost non-existent, and everyone is usually nice. These games should be similar in tone. Obviously, there will be betrayals and what-not because this is just that type of game. Deceit and manipulation. Lying and backstabbing. It just happens. But there are ways to do it kindly. Gentleman Killers - where you laugh with your friend as you stab them in the back. If you were to switch places with a person and you would be pissed if they were to do to you what you're about to do to them, you might want to rethink things. Even if you wouldn't be pissed, you might want to consider if they would be pissed still. And if you're doing something specifically to make another player mad because that anger will benefit you, you really need to reconsider (yes, this happened in a game about a year ago. I was the target, and I was particularly not amused).

You don't have to play to lose or any of that nonsense. Just don't prioritize winning above all else, and it should be fine. Play to your win con, but don't necessarily play to win. There's a very subtle, but crucial, difference there.

Sorry for the long answer, but it's not really an easy question.

[Jondesu]

6 minutes ago, little wilson said:

Lately, I've seen some red flag comments that makes me feel there's another aggressive shift coming on, though. Which worries me even more, because I'm not sure how much it'll take to lose the ground we've gained in the last 9 months, and before then, we were only about 3-5 months away from losing the games, had that trend continued.

I'm curious, what kind of things have you seen?  Don't have to name names, of course, but I want to see what I can do to help combat that myself (I wasn't around for it before, but I have some of the same worries even though I haven't experienced it directly).  I don't even know if anything I've done has contributed to the problem, though I hope not.  I do know that in some of my early games I took a very clear "I'll do and say anything I feel like if it'll help me win" stance, and have shifted more to just trying to have fun with the game since then.

[Ecthelion III]

As someone who is not very good with strategy and analysis in general, I agree that optimal play in SE emphasizes having a good time rather than just trying to win.

That being said, I would like to apologize for being a sheep.

[Seonid]

Yeah - I shouldn't have signed up for this game. I didn't have the time or energy to devote to it, and the village suffered because of it. Not that I was alone in this, but well...I can only take responsibility for my own actions.

Sorry for trying to stand up against a Joe lynch, @little wilson. Not knowing anything about how the game had gone, it really did look like a dire situation for the village, and the neutrals looked like they were coming in and trying to blackmail the village into meeting their win cons. And I reacted as badly to that as your neutral team did to other potential blackmail. I just didn't have the time and energy to follow up and make it worthwhile. Again, my bad.

[Yitzi2]

12 minutes ago, little wilson said:

Sorry for the long answer, but it's not really an easy question.

Yeah, I know how those can be.

I think there are really four basic issues to be dealt with in this regard:

1. Play that is optimal for winning, but such a jerk move that you'd be upset if it were done the other way around.  I believe that the best way to prevent this is to simply have a rule not to do it, and make sure that all new players know about these rules.  It might also help to have rough rules about when betrayals are acceptable, and when they aren't.  (Betraying someone known to be on your own team is pretty clearly not acceptable; betraying someone on the opposing team pretty obviously is IMO, at least in many cases.  But we like complicated game formats, and having guidelines on the more complicated situations might help get everybody on the same page.)

2. People who play optimally making the game less fun for those who prefer a more relaxed playstyle.  I think that promoting RP is a good way to deal with this, since it means that even the optimal players will play in a way that makes the game fun for those who don't care so much about winning.

3. People who play in a more relaxed manner making the game less fun for those who prefer a more optimal playstyle.  This gets tricky, and in extreme situations may require the use of publicly known handicaps.  (For instance, if a player likes to do crazy things sometimes, they might ask for a public bonus role requiring them to take an interesting but suboptimal action every so often, and then when figuring out team numbers they might only count half.)  After all, playing around suboptimal players is a lot more fun for the optimal-style players when the suboptimal play is an official part of the game.

4. Different playstyles.  For instance, I don't have an issue with someone mayoring, as long as everybody gets to contribute ideas.  If someone else does, that could cause conflicts.  It gets worse in a case that could be seen as issue #1.  One possibility to solve this is to have an official playstyle for the forum or for a specific game; another is to ask everybody to have a public profile providing their preferences, and have that be in a separate thread, so that people can easily see what will and won't bother other people.

(This is not counting issues through which the game format can make something feel oppressive or un-fun to some players; that is something that I intend to address more in the epilogue to MR23, as that game has clearly not turned out as intended, and I intend to analyze some of what about the format made it so unstable and otherwise problematic.)

[Arinian]

Hey! Someone said toxic? I'm here! 

Wilson can confirm that I'm super toxic.

 

[Steeldancer]

2 hours ago, little wilson said:

Long post incoming

First, let me just say that we need to learn how to play with neutrals. By neutrals, I don't mean village- or elim-aligned neutrals. I mean true neutrals. The kind who can help anyone and still win. Aman was the only villager vocal about a pro-neutral strategy from the beginning of the game. All the other villagers were content to either ignore us or antagonize us by wanting to control us because they refused to even attempt to work civilly with us. Both of these are terrible neutral strategies. Really. They're bad. Why are they bad? Let me count the ways.

Ignoring Neutrals
Just because someone doesn't share your alignment doesn't mean you can't work with them. Especially if their alignment is neutral. And keep in mind: working with someone does not mean that you trust them. Paranoia is healthy in these games. Well, to a certain degree, but I digress. The point is that just because you are ignoring them doesn't mean your opponent is ignoring them, and if you ignore them and your opponent doesn't, the neutrals will end up helping your opponent. Not because they don't want to help you, but because they don't know how to help you because you're ignoring them! From their perspective, it's like they don't even exist to you. How are they supposed to help someone who acts like they don't exist? And why would they feel the compunction to help you either?

Antagonizing Neutrals
Nobody likes to feel controlled. When you antagonize someone, if they have a chance to work against you without you learning about it, they'll jump on it. Without hesitation, usually. Therefore, antagonizing neutrals is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very act of trying to control them because you refuse to work with them without exerting power over them makes them more likely to help your enemy because now they're just pissed at you. Not exactly ideal.

 

So, what happened this game?

Well, early-game, we obviously wanted to be in contact with both sides, so we knew how to help both sides. Making deals and what-not. The elims took a bit to reach out to us, though, and when they did, they really sent the wrong person to do it. I mentioned this already, but Yitzi wanted leverage (aka blackmail) over the neutrals they worked with. So...control. Given the anti-neutral sentiment in the thread, we were fairly on edge already. And we were already thinking that Rand was evil (which was wrong, obviously), and now with another anti-neutral admitting to being an eliminator, it sure looked to us like the eliminators were taking an anti-neutral stance in the thread to antagonize the neutrals against the village and make us more likely to help the eliminators.

This actually isn't a bad plan, assuming the neutrals don't realize what's going on. And if they're the type of players to cave to leverage. Unfortunately, this particular group of neutrals was definitely not the type of players you approach and try to get leverage on. Joe, Orlok, El, and I do not respond well to blackmail (and I think everyone knows that you shouldn't try to blackmail Stink  ). Indeed, our reaction to Yitzi reaching out to us and the belief that Rand was evil was that we didn't really have any desire to help a Rand/Yitzi team. We wanted them dead, and fast. Orlok and I decided that even if it meant we lost, we wanted to make a point that antagonizing neutrals was not the way to do things.

We approached Aman and Rae and briefed them on what was going, asking if they wanted to know the name of the eliminator trying to get leverage over us. Aman was hesitant, but ultimately told us to tell him, because allowing players to control other players isn't cool. He'd already expressed suspicion of Yitzi, and was able to play off his knowledge as just that suspicion growing. Sorry, eliminators, for giving up Yitzi. Really.

Then both Rand and Aman died the following night. This was unfortunate for three reasons: one, Aman was going to be the driving force for a Joe lynch in exchange for El protecting Rae that same night, two: Aman was the most vocal pro-neutral villager in a game filled with anti-neutral villagers, and three: Rand wasn't evil. Oops.

But surely Len is. He's also been anti-neutral, and the original N1 kill on Ecth doesn't make sense, unless Len is evil and remembers the last time they were on opposite teams, when he had to drop out of the game because he'd seen Ecth in the evil doc. Very meta. Also very wrong. Sorry, Len.

It was at this point in time that the neutrals went quiet. I don't really know why the others did but for me, I just kind of lost all motivation to be involved. PMs stopped going up nightly, so I didn't have that connection to the other neutrals, and the only anti-neutral player alive was Drake and it was obvious that he was village. Everyone else was content to just ignore us. No one tried to engage us in the game. And the game started to falter and drag, until Joe finally came in and voted on himself in an attempt to drive discussion.

And this is where things really shifted for me. Obviously the village didn't know that we'd given up Yitzi, but multiple villagers had commented up to that point that I at least had been a very pro-village neutral. Which was true. Yet now the village is suddenly very anti-me. Heaven forbid I try to get my win con when I've tried to help the village and now the remaining villagers refuse to help me win unless I help them more. Some people said that a mislynch would be terrible for the village, and while that was true, we'd suggested a Joe lynch earlier in the game, but it was shot down because everyone wanted information lynches (which all turned out to be mislynches, mind you). So am I just supposed to lose because the village wants to handle their own mislynches on villagers? I think not. Also, most of the village was saying "We've only lynched one eliminator so far; we can't lynch someone we know isn't an eliminator! Help us find another couple eliminators and then we'll help you lynch Joe!" and you have no idea how close I came to being like "Guess what? The only reason you've even lynched a single eliminator is because of me." But that wasn't the deal we'd made with Aman, and it undoubtedly would've ticked the elims off and probably would've resulted in Orlok dying in the night, so I showed some restraint. So Orlok dealt with that.

That said, I did understand that the living villagers had no reason to just accept our word for the help we'd already given the village, which is why I hinted at some more information I could give the village in exchange for that lynch, since the counterlynch to Joe was the original N1 kill before the switch. I figured that information would not only help with Joe's initial point - driving discussion in an attempt to get a different lynch - but would also get the village behind the Joe lynch. But no one caught that offer.

Araris contacted me N6 when PMs came back up, asking me to vote for Flash D8. I agreed. Not only had I given my word, but I'd had a feeling Araris was evil, and I liked the idea of working with him. I mentioned this PM and subsequent request to Orlok and El, and while we discussed this, I realized that I had no desire to help the village now (sorry, Rae and Aman. Especially Aman). While some of them kind of helped with the Joe lynch, they'd made it extremely difficult and despite the outcry against that lynch, no one really talked about other suspicions. It was all just "We can't lynch Joe!" So it didn't really feel like they were even trying to solve the game.

The next day, I mentioned the information offer from the day before, and finally Flash caught it and started asking about. But it was a little late. By the time I saw his question, 3 hours after he'd asked it, it was 4-5 hours before the end of the cycle. I didn't want to screw with the mislynch that turn because that's just mean, so I looked at the votes and who they were from. 6 votes and I was pretty certain 4 of them wouldn't be online before rollover to change it. So I revealed the info about N1 and Ecth, partly to kind of troll the village just a bit.

Araris contacted Orlok the next night with his "blackmail" PM, but Orlok had given permission for it, as it was the only way to get out of the agreement he'd made with Seonid. And then PMs went down once again for D8. The day I'm supposed to vote for Flash.

Problem: Flash was gunning for Araris. While Araris had assured me they had control of the lynch, I know they had to be feeling a little bit of pressure, and then I had a brilliant idea: confessing that the eliminators called me debt in and then voting for Araris, making it seem like the eliminators asked me to vote for Araris, and therefore, Araris is village. I actually soundboarded it off Aonar, because I wasn't sure I should actually do it. I knew it would liven things up and would at least cause Flash to second guess himself heavily, which is all ultimately why I did it. I wanted a good last cycle, and trolling Flash would be hilarious for me (sorry). So I did it.

I was genuinely worried too, because PMs are down and therefore, the eliminators have no idea what's going on in my head. Nor do the other active neutrals. But I was more worried about the eliminators. I basically realized that I was betting heavily on Araris knowing that I wouldn't go back on my word. It doesn't look like he mentioned that in the doc, but he did know that I was trolling, which is the most important thing. And Stick, you played on that beautifully. Araris kind of hit the "Flash must be evil" bit a little too hard, but your responses had me dying. It was so funny. And then Orlok and El joined in, and it was just great. I accused them of blatantly trolling, saying that I wasn't doing any such thing, which was true. I was subtly trolling.

Drake's post, though, was the cherry on top for me:

It's not bad logic. It just....assumes that I'm not acting of my own volition, which I was. Also, I was telling the truth. I never said they'd told me to vote for Araris. Not once. Go back and look. As for following the terms of the deal to the letter.....hm. I think so? Though it's "to the letter and plus some." Worth it, though, for a confusing finish. I'm content with that end.

 

A few final comments:

In glancing over the evil doc, I noticed that in my attempt to phish out Yitzi, I was 3 for 3 in contacting elims. For the villagers who don't know about this, Yitzi contacted Joe and wanted to know my role, and Joe PMed me asking permission to tell Yitzi. As I was writing the PM giving him permission, Yitzi PMed Joe, saying he wanted leverage, so Joe replied to me, saying that he'd changed his mind because he'd be Yitzi's leverage and he didn't want to be anyone's leverage. I understood, but I wanted to know who the eliminator was in contact with Joe. So I looked at who was online, knowing that that PM took place in the last 10 minutes. And I narrowed it down to three people: Yitzi, Stick and Arin. I'm fairly amused now...

@randuir -

First, I was neutral. I don't need to be obliged to do anything, certainly not for someone who was so pointlessly anti-my-alignment. If this were Aman, sure. Or even Rae. But none of the other villagers did a single thing to make me be obliged to do a single thing for them, least of all you. Oh, also: Yitzi. You're welcome, Rand.

Second, what you define as "optimal play" I define as "suboptimal" because in the grand scheme of things, true optimal play would change the metagame enough that it would be toxic for 17th Shard and this subforum would be promptly shut down. There are many forums where Win First Above All Else playstyles are the norm, and those who play to win can have uber amounts of fun. Forums that focus on casual and fun play where everyone can have fun regardless of if they are winning or not are far less common. Be careful what playstyles you promote as the "best ones" for people to use, because it has a larger effect than you might think. You're not the one who will have to go to the admins to shut the games down when they get too toxic. I am. I don't want to do that.

Can I mention how stressed out I was during that last day? I was more or less trying to consider every single angle. All day. You might have been laughing, but I was stressing. A lot. 

[Araris Valerian]

Well, now you know that Wilson is a Troll. If that is an option, always choose it, unless it means that she's breaking a deal with you.

[Steeldancer]

However badly the village played this game, I personally feel I played a lot better than I did in LG34. As soon as I was able to be active, I was constantly trying to solve the game, while not getting as excitable. Until the last day where I was panicking. And I don't know if you noticed, but I am a HUGE fan of my analysis document. It makes things a lot easier, and perhaps if I had known how to use it better, it could have been a lot more useful. No ones told me it's not allowed, so I assume it is... 

Anyway I certainly learned a lot about strategy this game. Whether elim or village in the future, I plan on being a lot more smart, and maybe more successful in my play style. 

[Elbereth]

2 minutes ago, The Flash said:

Can I mention how stressed out I was during that last day? I was more or less trying to consider every single angle. All day. You might have been laughing, but I was stressing. A lot. 

Which is something the game shouldn't be. If you're actually legitimately stressed about a game, you need to take time to step back and realise that it is only a game and nothing more. Your personal health is more important. That's kind of Wilson's point here - if a game is stressful because you care too much about winning, something is wrong. No one wants to have that kind of stress or cause it, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure that the first priority in a game is having fun. 

Also, side note, a lot of that is what players with high experience feel all the time. Not all - Joe probably doesn't, and I'm not high enough that I do - but Aman and Wilson, for instance. They feel all eyes are on them to solve the game, to always be right, to be perfect, etc. Wilson's mostly changed that for herself by adopting a less intense playstyle, but that did occur for a long time. You can see why she got annoyed. Or look at Orlok - he solved AG3 completely. He collapsed and was hospitalised doing so because of how much he pushed himself for it. I'd rather not have that happen again, to anyone. So I'm rather a fan of not having stressful games, thank you very much.

[Orlok Tsubodai]

@Yitzi2, some thoughts of my own in response:

Firstly, I disagree vehemently that we should tell people how exactly to play, including planning particular play styles. There will be enough edge cases caught in it that it becomes really difficult to know where to draw the line. Better, I think, to expect everyone to behave as mature adults, and to censure individual players who do not behave in a sensible fashion. The forum is a blend of unique players, and everyone has their own way to have fun. If we ban one playstyle, it will become very easy to ban another. I can see Stink's for instance, coming under scrutiny, despite it being obvious to everyone that he's having fun. 

I'm not sure RP is the solution to players trying to achieve their win conditions by any means possible. It masks the issue, rather than solves it. Players here to have fun are here to play SE in a fun manner, not to RP whilst other people make the game itself less fun. We need an attitude change in the forum, and players accepting that we're not Mafia Universe, and are not here to mimic them, instead.

I very much don't think that we should play the game around suboptimal players, rather than with them, which is the implication I get from your post. If we do that, we give the impression that we don't actually care for them as players, and that we are just interested in winning. Having been here now nearly 2.5 years, I've found far greater benefit and enjoyment from the forum's supportive nature, and the atmosphere, than from playing to win in ny individual game.

I think here, we need to look at the implications of actions, rather than your idea. I'm in a rush, as is probably evident, but mayoring has a tangible decrease in autonomy, and so fun for all players, hence my disagreement with it. How would you feel if you played a game in which nothing you did mattered? Where you had to vote as you were told, act as you were told, and would die if you didn't? I certainly don't see how such a game would be fun for anyone in that situation.

Further (hopefully better articulated) thoughts to follow, when I'm no longer already late for an engagement.

[Steeldancer]

6 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

Which is something the game shouldn't be. If you're actually legitimately stressed about a game, you need to take time to step back and realise that it is only a game and nothing more. Your personal health is more important. That's kind of Wilson's point here - if a game is stressful because you care too much about winning, something is wrong. No one wants to have that kind of stress or cause it, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure that the first priority in a game is having fun. 

Also, side note, a lot of that is what players with high experience feel all the time. Not all - Joe probably doesn't, and I'm not high enough that I do - but Aman and Wilson, for instance. They feel all eyes are on them to solve the game, to always be right, to be perfect, etc. Wilson's mostly changed that for herself by adopting a less intense playstyle, but that did occur for a long time. You can see why she got annoyed. Or look at Orlok - he solved AG3 completely. He collapsed and was hospitalised doing so because of how much he pushed himself for it. I'd rather not have that happen again, to anyone. So I'm rather a fan of not having stressful games, thank you very much.

Well it kind of came with the fact that the neutrals were trolling, I was on the plate and the village was going to lose. So yeah. Stressful. You'll note I only talked once on Sunday because I was trying to take a breather.

However I think Aman did an admirable job this game. I thought his play style and everything was fantastic. I'm a big @Amanuensis fan

Edited July 24, 2017 by The Flash

[Araris Valerian]

I'm actually rather sad that Aman was a Scavenger. Killing him took a lot of the discussion out of the game, but he is dangerous enough without being a confirmed villager. @The Flash thank you for the effort you put into keeping that going, by the way. I think you made this game more fun for everyone involved.

[Yitzi2]

37 minutes ago, OrlokTsubodai said:

@Yitzi2, some thoughts of my own in response:

Firstly, I disagree vehemently that we should tell people how exactly to play, including planning particular play styles. There will be enough edge cases caught in it that it becomes really difficult to know where to draw the line. Better, I think, to expect everyone to behave as mature adults, and to censure individual players who do not behave in a sensible fashion. The forum is a blend of unique players, and everyone has their own way to have fun. If we ban one playstyle, it will become very easy to ban another. I can see Stink's for instance, coming under scrutiny, despite it being obvious to everyone that he's having fun. 

I'm not sure RP is the solution to players trying to achieve their win conditions by any means possible. It masks the issue, rather than solves it. Players here to have fun are here to play SE in a fun manner, not to RP whilst other people make the game itself less fun. We need an attitude change in the forum, and players accepting that we're not Mafia Universe, and are not here to mimic them, instead.

I very much don't think that we should play the game around suboptimal players, rather than with them, which is the implication I get from your post. If we do that, we give the impression that we don't actually care for them as players, and that we are just interested in winning. Having been here now nearly 2.5 years, I've found far greater benefit and enjoyment from the forum's supportive nature, and the atmosphere, than from playing to win in ny individual game.

I think here, we need to look at the implications of actions, rather than your idea. I'm in a rush, as is probably evident, but mayoring has a tangible decrease in autonomy, and so fun for all players, hence my disagreement with it. How would you feel if you played a game in which nothing you did mattered? Where you had to vote as you were told, act as you were told, and would die if you didn't? I certainly don't see how such a game would be fun for anyone in that situation.

Further (hopefully better articulated) thoughts to follow, when I'm no longer already late for an engagement.

I agree that telling people to have particular play styles is a suboptimal solution; however, we do need some way to deal with the issue of some people's playstyles making things unfun for others.  I find it interesting that you mention Stink, as that is actually a playstyle that we do need to find a way to deal with; Stink's playstyle making things un-fun for players who care (at least to some extent) about winning is no less a problem than highly competitive playstyles making things unfun for players who don't care that much about winning.  We need to make things fun for everyone, or else we might as well just split the forum in two right now.

If you feel that RP is not the solution, maybe I misunderstood the problem: What, exactly, are you trying to get out of a game of SE, if it's not RP and not competitive play?

I do think that we should play the game with suboptimal players, but we need to design the game around them, or else the game becomes unfun for players who do care about winning (which are players we want to support, as long as they aren't the toxic type who care about winning at the expense of other players' fun) who have those suboptimal players on their team.

I agree with you about extreme mayoring as you describe, as that prevents everyone else from trying to win.  (They're simply following orders, not trying to win via their own ideas.)  However, if someone's ideas are ignored for no real reason, that is also a decrease in their ability to play the game.  To put it another way: Someone being the effective leader of the village isn't a problem, but when it replaces discussion with a single person's fiat, that's not ok.

EDIT: I'm inclined to continue this in the metagame discussion thread.

Edited July 24, 2017 by Yitzi2

[Stick.]

8 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I'm actually rather sad that Aman was a Scavenger. Killing him took a lot of the discussion out of the game, but he is dangerous enough without being a confirmed villager. @The Flash thank you for the effort you put into keeping that going, by the way. I think you made this game more fun for everyone involved.

^ 

[Steeldancer]

14 minutes ago, _Stick_ said:

^ 

Is this an agreement? 

Did I do something right (gets a little emotional)? It's hard to tell when everyone was being so hard on me

[Stick.]

6 minutes ago, The Flash said:

Is this an agreement? 

Did I do something right (gets a little emotional)? It's hard to tell when everyone was being so hard on me

Yes, that's agreement. :-P 

[StrikerEZ]

@The Flash What you did as the game drew near its end was awesome. You kept the discussion going and did an amazing job, especially with that document of yours.

But I definitely did not like the trolling a time the end done by the neutrals, and I do feel your pain Flash. To me, that felt like the neutrals were just rubbing it in the villagers's faces that they'd lost. I do understand that it was meant to be a joke, but it felt really rude to me. I dunno, I guess it just rubbed me the wrong way.

[Orlok Tsubodai]

1 hour ago, StrikerEZ said:

@The Flash What you did as the game drew near its end was awesome. You kept the discussion going and did an amazing job, especially with that document of yours.

But I definitely did not like the trolling a time the end done by the neutrals, and I do feel your pain Flash. To me, that felt like the neutrals were just rubbing it in the villagers's faces that they'd lost. I do understand that it was meant to be a joke, but it felt really rude to me. I dunno, I guess it just rubbed me the wrong way.

Our actions this last cycle were certainly not intended to rub the villagers' loss in their face, but in an attempt to have some fun. I essentially achieved my win condition on D1, making contact with all other neutral players, and creating a neutral bloc, in the first 28 hours of the game, and revealing my role to the thread. There was very little else for me to do during the game, which then led to leaping on Wilson's idea, and running around with it. I'm not sure that it should be taken as rubbing anything in the village's face, though. We could have acted precisely as we did throughout most of the game, and caused confusion.

Regardless, the key point is that our actions were never intended to cause anyone distress, and for that, I am sorry.

[Elenion]

@little wilson

Ecth and I are actually on opposite teams quite a bit. The doc problem happened all the way back in LG26 or something, and since then we've agreed to not check SE in public view and to use different browsers so docs don't come up in browsing history. I've only ever kill-prioritized Ecth once that I remember, and that was back in QF20.

[TheMightyLopen]

12 hours ago, _Stick_ said:

Yay we won!  Good job @Araris Valerian @Paranoid King @Arinian @Yitzi2

 

hah I'm honoured but can't really say I fooled everyone  Lopen was kinda suspicious of me before we killed him [yeah, we convinced ourselves that he was the ringleader :P] and Drake heavily suspected me near the end, oh, and Len as well, and many others that i cant recall XD

I was hoping to be village this game but yeah, I really enjoyed. Kudos to hael for running it  Oh, and thanks @A Joe in the Bush for unexpectedly saving yitzi from possibly getting lynched D1 XD I'm pretty sure I wouldve voted on Rand if the CFD hadnt happened because losing a teammate on D1 sucks and that probably wouldve gotten me lynched the next cycle or the one after XD

And yay for the neutrals! Congrats on winning and thanks for helping! Your trolling last turn was fun :-P 

I blame @Amanuensis.  And yes, I did hold to my suspicion of you pretty much the entire time I was alive(and once I was dead too I suppose). The only one I never really suspected was Arinian, but he didn't really post much, so eh.

Anyways, GG everyone, and congrats to the elims(and the neutrals) for pulling off the win.

Thanks for running the game Hael! I had a lot of fun. And maybe someday I'll get past the first 2 Cycles in one of your games...

[little wilson]

3 hours ago, Jondesu said:

I'm curious, what kind of things have you seen?  Don't have to name names, of course, but I want to see what I can do to help combat that myself (I wasn't around for it before, but I have some of the same worries even though I haven't experienced it directly).  I don't even know if anything I've done has contributed to the problem, though I hope not.  I do know that in some of my early games I took a very clear "I'll do and say anything I feel like if it'll help me win" stance, and have shifted more to just trying to have fun with the game since then.

The main thing that I've seen is regarding blackmailing other players. This, obviously, came up in this game, and very few spoke out against it. The only ones who did were directly involved. No one else said anything, which seems to indicate a tacit agreement for blackmail, whether you mean it to be or not. But that's for the conversation in the metagame discussion thread (which I'll get to later. A little busy today)

[Yitzi2]

32 minutes ago, little wilson said:

The main thing that I've seen is regarding blackmailing other players. This, obviously, came up in this game, and very few spoke out against it. The only ones who did were directly involved. No one else said anything, which seems to indicate a tacit agreement for blackmail, whether you mean it to be or not. But that's for the conversation in the metagame discussion thread (which I'll get to later. A little busy today)

I think that was due mainly to me not knowing that jerk-y moves (such as backstabbing someone else for no personal gain) are frowned on, and trying to take precautions to prevent it.