Quick Fix 45: To Set an Example

[theTruthshaper]

Gah! I don't have any idea how to do any analysis. All things somebody could be doing which would show them as village are also this elims could be doing. I might get some reads is there is an actual discussion going on, so I am pinging everyone. Anyway, it's practically rollover.

@Ashbringer @Straw @Vapor @TJ Shade @Eternum @MysticLotus @Frozen Mint @Fifth Scholar @Devotary of Spontaneity @StrikerEZ

Also, Straw what are your suspicions of me?

 

[+Lotus she/her]

Rollover isn’t for like, five hours.

[theTruthshaper]

Yes, but I am going to roll over in bed in an hour.

[Straw he/him]

1 hour ago, TJ Shade said:

Straw played with Pyro as the elim team in the most recent MR. He should have, for all reasons, known that Pyro's action that caused suspicion were, at least to an extent, NAI. Instead, he was the one to point out the actions as weird and hammered in on him

I'm confused as to what you're saying here? It doesn't really make any sense to say that since I was an elim with him, I should find his actions NAI?

1 hour ago, TJ Shade said:

A villager would try to include all possibilities here, and not just simply ignore villager-y players.

Not always. Clearing people is important for analysis, since it allows you to look in a smaller group of players.

1 hour ago, TJ Shade said:

Straw and Eternum attacked Vapor in C1 for being confused but quickly accepted the new player confusion. They could have easily understood that it was new player confusion before attacking her. Seems like distancing.

I don't think we attacked her for being confused, we attacked her for placing votes for no reason.

Just now, The_Truthwatcher said:

Gah! I don't have any idea how to do any analysis. All things somebody could be doing which would show them as village are also this elims could be doing. I might get some reads is there is an actual discussion going on, so I am pinging everyone. Anyway, it's practically rollover.

It's not about seeing whether it's 100% coming from a villager or an elim, it's about figuring out which is more likely.

[+Lotus she/her]

17 minutes ago, The_Truthwatcher said:

Yes, but I am going to roll over in bed in an hour.

Really, huh? I usually sleep on top of my bed, not with it rolled around me.

[|TJ| he/him]

3 minutes ago, Straw said:

I'm confused as to what you're saying here? It doesn't really make any sense to say that since I was an elim with him, I should find his actions NAI?

Wait, no. I meant it as you possibly could distinguish his elim-y actions from non-elimy ones. But that doesn't make sense since I'm taking only one game as the sample. 

5 minutes ago, Straw said:

Not always. Clearing people is important for analysis, since it allows you to look in a smaller group of players.

Yes, but none of us have done anything solid to be "cleared", have we? Focusing on smaller group of players is what got us here. Clearing people is good when we have something to go on, we have nothing now. 

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

All right. I’m tempted to go along with Striker and vote Mint immediately, especially for the blatant ingratitude here: 

16 hours ago, Frozen Mint said:

I'm going to quote myself from last cycle:

I keep seeing it mentioned that I always deflect suspicion, which is somehow... suspicious. What am I deflecting exactly? Because in C2, despite the lynch train on me, people didn't feel very strongly about lynching me. IMO the reason the suspicion keeps "sliding off me" is because there's no substance to it. I just see a lot of votes without much reasoning behind them.

@MysticLotus @Vapor Both of you voted on me saying you find me suspicious, without elaborating. Would you guys be willing to share your reasons for suspecting me?

Not sure if I'll be able to get on later so voting on Fifth for now.

I’ve saved you two cycles in a row from lynches you’d have otherwise died to, intentionally or unintentionally, and you believe I’m evil? That’s an incredibly odd perspective coming from a village!Mint. I’m rather of the mind that you’re looking for an easy mislynch on me, given that I’m already under fire for...voting my convictions C3? I’m not really sure where the suspicion is coming from. I’ve yet to see any argument against me not grounded in “what if Fifth/X are Elims together, then Fifth’s actions can be interpreted as defending/saving X, so Fifth is evil”? Perhaps those of you using this logic should be pursuing X instead to see if my defence or protection of them has any implications as to my actual alignment before you lynch me on unproven assumptions. The point stands, however, that if you’re village, a vote on me makes a lot less sense than one on Striker or Lotus. On the other hand, I have no idea why elim!Mint would do this either. So I suppose this post just confuses the storms out of me.  

17 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Whelp, I think it’s LyLo now. We obviously didn’t have 6 elims since the game is still going, so that means half of the rest of you are elims. Frozen Mint. I think it’s time we finally lynch her, as she’s been avoiding the lynch for so many cycles now.

Do you have anything beyond this, Striker? While I agree Mint has dodged the lynch twice under less-than-ideal circumstances which were arguably preventable (for instance, Mist PMing me last cycle that he was planning to hammer his vote would have resulted in Mint’s death, as I wouldn’t have felt compelled to hammer myself), this post hardly provides reasons why Mint is suspicious in the first place. And I’d like your thoughts on some other players; it’s too easy for people to get by at this stage in the game by just stating their opinions on one person and leaving it at that, and I’m sure you have thoughts on more people than just Mint. 

11 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Since we presumably have five elims out of the remaining eleven players, we'll need every villager to put their vote on the same person. The elims might not be able to have everyone online at rollover to hammer, but there's no reason to risk it. I think I'm going to go for Fifth again, but I don't know. Presumably only one of Striker and Mint is evil, and even if we lynch Fifth and don't lose we'd have to pick one of them. I'd go for Striker over Mint, even though I'd be willing to believe Fifth put purposefully voted for Mint too late for it to count.

Things start to get super shaky after that even if we somehow survive another two cycles. I don't really have too much of a long term plan, Fifth-Striker-Straw is the furthest I've guessed. I'd say Ash and Mint are unlikely with that team. TJ could be with Fifth I guess. If Straw and Truthwatcher were both elims I'd have expected at least one of them to vote yesterday. I've got nothing on Vapor. Eternum was village read for a while but that means not so much with exclusively village dead. Lotus could be evil, possibly, but that doesn't work great with elim!TJ, and Striker doesn't either. Was TJ ever in serious danger of dying? It got to 7-6 at one point, I know.

I’m...seriously starting to suspect at least one of the people pushing a five-person elim team and emphasising that every villager *must* vote a certain way is actually part of a four-person eliminator team trying to create needless bandwagoning. Five Elims has gone unquestioned the entire game, of course, but it’s still an assumption. (4/22)≈0.182 and (5/22)≈.227. I’m not sure how true this is anymore, but the rule of thumb is usually 15-25% of players are Eliminators, with 20% as the default. From these percentages, I’d say both a four-person and five-person team are equally likely, with a four-person team actually being closer to 20%, and I’m not sure why the latter is being universally assumed and even insisted upon, unless a smaller eliminator team is pushing it to try to get villagers to commit to a bandwagon in order to spare them the trouble of having to hammer a cycle early. 
See my comments to Mist above. Why do you suspect me, other than hypotheticals you’re considering with other people you also don’t know the alignment of? If you’re not evil, which I’m beginning to suspect, I believe you’re at the very least tunnelling, or at least you haven’t laid out enough of your reasoning for me to understand why I’m being placed in your crossbeams so consistently. 

2 hours ago, TJ Shade said:

Case - 4: None of the above

Yeah, this is where all the reads go off. I suppose there could be an Eternum, Devotary, Striker, Vapor, Ashbringer, but... I just don't see it. 

I think the collective failure of the village to focus on anyone outside of myself, Mint and Striker (and Straw to some extent, I suppose) for the last three cycles has hurt analysis significantly, which this section above highlights quite nicely. I understand why you don’t have a plan for a world in which none of our major suspicions turn out to be evil, but we should, and the mostly lost and confused state of the thread right now makes me feel like I’ve been pointed onto the wrong people entirely. I want to seriously re-evaluate Striker, and take a close look at some people who haven’t gotten any discussion at all recently (Vapor, you to some extent, Ashbringer), but for now my vote is going on Devotary. I’d like her to explain her suspicion of me in greater detail at the very least, laying aside my concerns that she’s simply using her usual pattern of last-minute votes in order to balance lynches and generate paranoia while staying neatly under the radar. 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

4 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Do you have anything beyond this, Striker? While I agree Mint has dodged the lynch twice under less-than-ideal circumstances which were arguably preventable (for instance, Mist PMing me last cycle that he was planning to hammer his vote would have resulted in Mint’s death, as I wouldn’t have felt compelled to hammer myself), this post hardly provides reasons why Mint is suspicious in the first place. And I’d like your thoughts on some other players; it’s too easy for people to get by at this stage in the game by just stating their opinions on one person and leaving it at that, and I’m sure you have thoughts on more people than just Mint. 

I’ll admit I don’t have much else on Mint specifically, besides what I’ve already said this cycle and in previous cycles. For now, I’m willing to vote on someone that other people are willing to vote on, and that doesn’t seem to be Frozen Mint.

As for other players, there are three people I’m fairly confident that are village, besides for myself of course. Eternum, Fifth, and TJ. I tunneled really hard on TJ, and he didn’t really buckle under the pressure like I would expect, and there also wasn’t any hardcore defenses of him, so I don’t think he’s an elim. Eternum and Fifth have been doing a lot of really sound analysis, even if it hasn’t exactly led anywhere. But neither has mine. So I’m going to trust them for now.

Of the players that remain, I’d be most willing to vote for Devotary. I was trying to write off her last minute votes as just her play style, but it’s conveniently led to several villagers getting lynched and causing a lot of paranoia. So for now, she’s my best bet for a member of the elim team. 

As for the rest of the team, I’m thinking it’s Mint, Straw, Lotus, and Vapor.

[Vapor she/her]

Devotary is pretty suspicious. I'm not really sure who anyone is, so I'm voting the most suspicious. 

@StrikerEZ why do you think it's me?

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

@The_Truthwatcher, if you're still there, you should be sure to vote this cycle.

@TJ Shade, right, I missed Straw in the vote tally.

1 hour ago, Fifth Scholar said:

I’ve yet to see any argument against me not grounded in “what if Fifth/X are Elims together, then Fifth’s actions can be interpreted as defending/saving X, so Fifth is evil”? Perhaps those of you using this logic should be pursuing X instead to see if my defence or protection of them has any implications as to my actual alignment before you lynch me on unproven assumptions. The point stands, however, that if you’re village, a vote on me makes a lot less sense than one on Striker or Lotus. On the other hand, I have no idea why elim!Mint would do this either. So I suppose this post just confuses the storms out of me.  

I’m...seriously starting to suspect at least one of the people pushing a five-person elim team and emphasising that every villager *must* vote a certain way is actually part of a four-person eliminator team trying to create needless bandwagoning. Five Elims has gone unquestioned the entire game, of course, but it’s still an assumption. (4/22)≈0.182 and (5/22)≈.227. I’m not sure how true this is anymore, but the rule of thumb is usually 15-25% of players are Eliminators, with 20% as the default. From these percentages, I’d say both a four-person and five-person team are equally likely, with a four-person team actually being closer to 20%, and I’m not sure why the latter is being universally assumed and even insisted upon, unless a smaller eliminator team is pushing it to try to get villagers to commit to a bandwagon in order to spare them the trouble of having to hammer a cycle early. 
See my comments to Mist above. Why do you suspect me, other than hypotheticals you’re considering with other people you also don’t know the alignment of? If you’re not evil, which I’m beginning to suspect, I believe you’re at the very least tunnelling, or at least you haven’t laid out enough of your reasoning for me to understand why I’m being placed in your crossbeams so consistently. 

I, at least, was voting on you first because I felt that your most likely teammates(Mint and Striker) were largely exclusive, and that learning your alignment would be more helpful than either of theirs. At this point, it's less useful because we can't really afford to have mislynches anymore. All the arguments for you are based on living players because all the dead players are the same alignment. Should you, Striker, and Mint all be village, I don't know what happens. Pretty much everyone else would be evil in that scenario. Does Vapor-Straw-Eternum-Truthwatcher-Ashbringer make sense? I don't know.

Even the possibility of a five elim hammer should be enough to make sure that doesn't happen. Whether or not a four person team is likely doesn't change the fact that splitting the village vote is fatal with a five person elim team capable of voting at rollover.

[Vapor she/her]

oops devotary

I won't be able to get on much for a while.

[+Lotus she/her]

I just don’t know who to trust...

__________________________
Feather was very, very upset to have been assigned to get rid of the bodies. She’d get blood all over her dress! It wasn’t the finest, no, but it was a good, solid fabric with a little embroidery. 
 

So she scowled and muttered under her breath that she would have to be getting extra compensation as she walked back through the ash from yesterday’s ashfall.

[Ashbringer he/him]

Aaagh! I was writing another analysis post on my computer and now I can’t post it!!!

(Well, I can post it, but not until an hour before reset. It’s a long semi-personal story, but TL:DR I can’t access my computer right now. I just got a new laptop, though, so hopefully this only affects this game.)

So I’ll just go with what I can see. The thoughts around Mint are confusing me. The last two rounds everyone wanted to lynch Mint but for little in discernable reason. Now, so many people have some suspicion of Elim!Mint but nobody’s voted for her. (Well, Striker did, but he moved to Devotary.) I don’t really know if Mint is being suspicious, but the sheer number of theories that depend on her alignment are telling.

That being said, we really can’t afford a mislynch here. We have eleven players now, with five (or four) being elims. If there are five, we need to be united in our votes, but I can’t help but notice that Devotary already said this, and the voters have seemingly taken her advice and decided to unite in lynching... Devotary.

That just doesn’t make much sense.

Voting Mint for now. Vapor, why are you voting for Devotary? 

[+Lotus she/her]

Arg I have to go for a few hours and will (probably) miss rollover. Gonna put a vote on Mint but hopefully I might be back to change it.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Devotary(3): Fifth, Striker, Vapor
Mint(2): Ashbringer, Lotus
Fifth(2): Mint, Devotary
Straw(1): TJ Shade

These votes are pretty widely spread out. I would rather vote any of the three other candidates over me, but I don't know what the right choice is. I'll put Fifth for now and switch to Mint as necessary. I will be around for rollover. A vote for Mint will only work if she's evil, because village!Mint would never vote for herself over me and I think trying to get the votes off me to someone else is hopeless. A vote for Fifth is similarly hopeless assuming Lotus and Truthwatcher don't come back unless they're elims because otherwise we can't afford to have them not cast votes for Fifth.

[Ashbringer he/him]

41 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

A vote for Mint will only work if she's evil, because village!Mint would never vote for herself over me and I think trying to get the votes off me to someone else is hopeless. A vote for Fifth is similarly hopeless assuming Lotus and Truthwatcher don't come back unless they're elims because otherwise we can't afford to have them not cast votes for Fifth.

Umm... huh?

Can you translate that for me please? That doesn’t make any sense to my brain.

Hour to reset, folks.

[+Lotus she/her]

I’ll change my vote to Fifth from Mint

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

4 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Umm... huh?

Can you translate that for me please? That doesn’t make any sense to my brain.

Hour to reset, folks.

If Mint is village, then she will vote for someone other than herself, and that combined with the votes of a five person elim team will be enough to overwhelm the votes of everyone else. It's the same for village!Fifth and in addition a vote for elim!Fifth can never work so long as village!Lotus has a vote on Mint and village!Truthwatcher doesn't vote, as a five person elim team would be able to outvote the other four villagers.

Edit:

That last part no longer applies, as Lotus did come back.

Devotary(3): Fifth, Striker, Vapor
Fifth(3): Mint, Devotary, Lotus
Mint(1): Ashbringer
Straw(1): TJ Shade

@Ashbringer, @TJ Shade, @Eternum, @The_Truthwatcher, @Straw, do any of you have better ideas than me vs. Fifth?

Edited June 25, 2020 by Devotary of Spontaneity

[+Lotus she/her]

6 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

That last part no longer applies, as Lotus did come back.

Yeah. I had a dentist appointment that went much shorter than expected.

[Vapor she/her]

Mint instead of Devotary

[Eternum he/him]

30 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

@Ashbringer, @TJ Shade, @Eternum, @The_Truthwatcher, @Straw, do any of you have better ideas than me vs. Fifth?

I... really don't. I'm way too exhausted right now to make any sort of logical argument. Still genuinely don't like TJ, doubt I'll get any support on that one though.

I.. don't like how divided we are. MysticLotus, Devotary. Vapor switching off of Devotary gives me the worst gut feeling I've had all game. Very late in the cycle, absolutely no reasoning.. (though at this point that's fairly normal from them...) I'm genuinely so confused.

EDIT: Okay, on second thought, that Vapor switch makes me more susp of Vapor than Devotary

Devotary(2): Fifth, Striker
Fifth(3): Mint, Devotary, Lotus
Mint(2): Ashbringer, Vapor
Straw(1): TJ Shade 

Vapor (1): Eternum

Edited June 25, 2020 by Eternum

[Straw he/him]

2 minutes ago, Eternum said:

I... really don't. I'm way too exhausted right now to make any sort of logical argument. Still genuinely don't like TJ, doubt I'll get any support on that one though.

I.. don't like how divided we are. MysticLotus, Devotary. Vapor switching off of Devotary gives me the worst gut feeling I've had all game. Very late in the cycle, absolutely no reasoning.. (though at this point that's fairly normal from them...) I'm genuinely so confused.

With Vapor I've been in a constant internal debate between them being an elim who's using new player cred to get away with stuff and them being legitimately confused. I have an unexamined null read on Devotary, which is better than my read on Fifth. So Devotary.

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

Storms, I did not have the time to do the reread I wanted. Much quicker thoughts on the people I said I’d look into:

Striker: I don’t see a world where Striker is evil from a reread of his posts; there’s too much genuine villager-searching-for answers in them. Evil!Striker tends to be either highly defensive or very clinical with his votes; I’ve seen neither of those from him, and am getting an overwhelmingly good tone read from him. If he’s the Elim who’s tricked me this whole time, he deserves a hearty round of applause after we lose this cycle or the next. This all means I have to cautiously assume Mint is evil. Of course, that places me in the rather uncomfortable position of having saved an eliminator who I’ve wanted dead since C3 twice, and potentially doing so again now by refusing to move my vote.

Mint: After rereading (some of) her posts, I’m still unsure. On the one hand, I obviously don’t appreciate her accusations of me, which I feel don’t come from someone trying to honestly analyse the game, and she has been mostly quiet when she wasn’t defensive; on the other, the material she posts doesn’t seem to match with what an Elim would say, particularly one of Mint’s experience (as she has played before). I’m mostly struggling to interpret her vote on me this cycle, which came with no reasoning against one of the people instrumental in her survival—I think an Elim!Mint would pick a different target. 

Vapor/Ashbringer: I’m honestly pretty convinced that one, if not both, of these are eliminators who have successfully lain low the entire game. Ash has a slightly more “suspicious” voting record, ending up on a lot of the village trains, and if Mint is a villager, I’d be unsurprised if he was one of the Elims pushing for her mislynch this cycle. Unfortunately, I doubt there’s enough sentiment or evidence against either right now to bring them to a vote, but if we make it out of this cycle alive, they’d make good follow-up lynches.

Straw: Making his way slowly into my list of potential Elims simply from a lack of alternatives. I feel Shade’s analysis of why he could be evil is fairly good, though it doesn’t give enough credit to the possibility of a village!Straw worried about bandwagoning, but what’s most disquieting to me is his dropoff in activity after C1/2, when we started having the closer lynches. While his LG is certainly to blame at least partially, I think it might also be a deliberate choice to avoid giving opinions as discussion heated up. Probably evil if Mint is as well. 

TJ Shade: Still my strongest village read after Striker. Has been giving actual analysis rather than speculation (kudos to you for that; I’ve sadly not done any real analysis since C2, mainly because of time). Is putting in genuine effort, even if I disagree with a few of his conclusions. In particular, I like his recent posts which rightfully pointed out how narrow we’d allowed our pool of suspects to shrink. 

Eternum: Overhauling him from strongly village to neutral. Shade’s analysis illustrated fairly well how he’d been essentially hopping between suspicions, seeming unwilling to consider certain players (particularly Straw), and the general use of motivated reasoning in his last few posts—he seems to have a conclusion in mind as to how he should vote and then find a way to get there, rather than looking at evidence and deciding his vote from there. On the other hand, the analysis he does have doesn’t necessarily seem flawed, so I’m not ruling him out as a paranoid villager disillusioned by the failure of the last few lynches. I feel like I’m getting there myself  

Think that’s everyone except Devotary. Honestly she’s still suspicious to me, and I’m not as sold as I was on Mint a cycle or two ago—I’d much rather kill Devo here, as Mint just seems too obvious and unopposed. But the alternative, it appears, is me, and I’ll vote for someone I presume to be village over someone I know is village. As such, Mint. 

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

3 minutes ago, Eternum said:

Devotary(3): Fifth, Striker, Eternum
Fifth(3): Mint, Devotary, Lotus
Mint(2): Ashbringer, Vapor
Straw(1): TJ Shade 

This is a bad vote count. We will lose this cycle if there are five elims should this continue. 

Devotary(3): Striker, Eternum, Straw
Fifth(3): Mint, Devotary, Lotus
Mint(3): Ashbringer, Vapor, Fifth
Straw(1): TJ Shade 

This is not much better, although it does let me vote for Mint if necessary.

@Straw, why are you voting for me if you have a better read on me than Fifth?

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

There are way too storming many lynch targets. @Eternum, @TJ Shade, your single votes probably aren’t going anywhere. Please switch them? And agreed at the very least with Devotary that we need a more centralised lynch. This needs to clarify itself in the next ~3-4 minutes or we’re just asking for a hammer.