Board 8 > Mafia General Discussion Topic - Championship Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello everyone!

I wanted to post an update regarding the Mafia Championship taking place over on that other site.

As you know, they gathered 165 players from different communities and split them up into 11 "qualifier" games of 15 players each.

From each game, the 15 players vote at the end for their top three players (+4/+3/+2) and whoever gets the most votes advances into the "Finale" game. The Finale game gets 11 of it's 15 players this way. Then a jury selects 30 of the best players who didn't make it, to play in "Wildcard" games, and 4 wildcards move on to the finale as well.

I played in a game during May/June. I rolled scum. The end result... Scum did not win. Scum did not lose. It was... "no contest", aka tie.

The game came down to final 3. My scummate was alive, I was not. One of the townies placed a vote on the other townie, but they changed the lower case i in their name to a lower case l. So, for example, they placed a vote for ##Vote: Artl instead of ##Vote: Arti My scummate tried to hammer ##Vote: Arti, but because the first vote was not spelled properly, it had not gone through the automated voting system, therefore the first townie said "I tricked you!" and the town voted out the scum.

The entire site erupted into chaos (seriously, there's a discord chat and dozens of people were following this game) with mods, admins, and users all fighting over whether the move should be allowed, whether it was against the rules, whether it should be modkilled, whether the vote should've been counted and therefore scum wins, etc. Ultimately, the admin decided to announce the result as "Town Victory - Scum No Contest", in other words, the town wins, but scum didn't lose. As you can imagine, many people continued to chime in to support or debate this "result."

The automated voting system on the site was changed later that night to add a clear error message when someone votes for a player that is not on the playerlist, to ensure the situation never happens again.

All that to say, my game caused a lot of drama. And we were the only game in the history of the series (4 years running) to end in a result other than a clear win or loss for one side. (It wasn't as fun as it sounds.)

The game can be found here: http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/8685-Season-4-Game-5-So-You-Think-You-Can-Be-Super-The-Mafia-Championship

The players in the game voted for who they thought the best players were. I tied for second place in this vote, meaning I did not move on to the finale game. The player who got the #1 spot is a better player than me and absolutely deserves it, I voted for them as well as the player I tied 2nd with.

A jury selected 30 players from all 11 games to play in two wildcard games of 15.

I will be playing in a Wildcard game that begins on July 17th. If anyone wants to follow along, I'm sure the admin of the site will post here when it starts. It's guaranteed to be the most intense game of mafia I've ever played in my life. The first game had a number of lurkers and newbies (because they invited lots of communities that play mafia very casually), this one is guaranteed to be 15 players who take mafia very very seriously...

Anyway, just thought you guys should know what's going on over there. Thank you again for the nomination. =)

I wonder how we would rule that

my first instinct is thats a scum win

but I dont know
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That is 100% a scum win.
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Although.

@bng_mmmk

Never scum hammer. Ever.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

That is 100% a scum win.

^
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This is the post where the admin explained their ruling:

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/8685-Season-4-Game-5-So-You-Think-You-Can-Be-Super-The-Mafia-Championship?p=1225505&viewfull=1#post1225505

As a representative, I felt the best thing to do was to say "I understand this must have been a hard decision for the admins, and I respect it." So... that is my stance here as well.

100% a scum win. I was going on in the spectator chat about it and there's actually a fair number that agreed with me on this, and it's not even because I was biased in favor of Dels winning, it's just the right thing to do. There's really only two ways to properly adjudicate that in my opinion - the vote counts as if it were a real vote, which is 100% scum win no questions asked, or it's a modkill, which is 100% a scum win no questions asked.

Anyway, that all aside, I read a little over half of the games and Dels's (game 5) was the best by far. They had the most posts, the best discussion, and probably generated the most memes. Dels got kind of screwed by his teammate bussing him and probably could have lived a bit longer but oh well - ultimately town did fall for the scumteam's trap and would have lost if not for a dumb ploy that counted for some reason.

I read the entirety of game 11 and I am a changed man forever for how awful town played in that one.

Delseban posted...

This is the post where the admin explained their ruling:

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/8685-Season-4-Game-5-So-You-Think-You-Can-Be-Super-The-Mafia-Championship?p=1225505&viewfull=1#post1225505

As a representative, I felt the best thing to do was to say "I understand this must have been a hard decision for the admins, and I respect it." So... that is my stance here as well.

It's ok I'll keep going on about it forever if you won't

ScareChan posted...

I wonder how we would rule that

my first instinct is thats a scum win

but I dont know

We would have to rule it a scum win because it's so likely that the person counting the votes wouldn't even notice that the name was spelled wrong. And then even if we did we'd go 'well ok but I can tell who you meant to vote for'. It only worked in this case because the system is automated, and since they immediately fixed this loophole afterwards it's pretty clear it wasn't intended. Town was really only allowed to have the win because the rules weren't quite clear enough that this is not allowed (although in my opinion, they were - there's a 'no loopholes' rule).

I like how the post explaining the decision is 'this is clearly wrong and against the rules and we even have a rule not to break unwritten rules BUT it wasn't a written rule so town wins'.
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Yeah they even have a no angle shooting rule

Scum win all the way. But appreciate you being proper about things dels

Who do you think we should send next year? Im kind of interested but would depend on timing
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In that point Para I would say at worst a double no contest, because there is still *some* fault on scum for not letting the thing update and say vote counted, but scum in final 3 isnt really waiting long after a misvote.
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I would have ripped the person who placed the bad vote to pieces. Double when he tried to be like "haha I tricked you."
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Although.

bng_mmmk

Never scum hammer. Ever.

It's worked 5 out of 5 times so far!

(Even when Arti forgot to bold his vote at first, dummy.)
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ScareChan posted...

In that point Para I would say at worst a double no contest, because there is still *some* fault on scum for not letting the thing update and say vote counted, but scum in final 3 isnt really waiting long after a misvote.

Can't put the burden on scum players to do this though, because the votecount bot doesn't actually automatically update all that regularly, and relies on people to request a votecount, which is public information (something they're thinking about changing as well since it's sort of outdated). This may or may not out scum, but it's really too much to ask that they be forced to wait to see if a vote is legitimate, when the vote simply should be legitimate.

Trash (Dels's partner) could have ensured a victory by saying "okay, I'm not going to hammer", and then waiting for a legitimate vote, but she had no reason to suspect the vote was illegitimate so that would have been seen as totally unnecessary (and many consider it rude not to end the game ASAP).

that's a scum win, and if i were hosting it would also be a ban on the player who pulled the trick.
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On topic, without reading any links, I think it's plain as day scum wins and that player should be barred from future contests and his/her community be excluded from the next one to make a statement. That's blatantly going against the spirit of the game. There's no other way to slice it, imo.

(Also a pretty major oversight in rules given the scale of the event and the nature of the automated voting thing.)

Great job Dels!
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I imagine that if you're going to hammer, you should at least be subtle about it, pretending it's a justified vote. It doesn't take much longer and plays around shenanigans a bit better.
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(and many consider it rude not to end the game ASAP).

"Fuck that."

- Sir Chris, 2010
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ScareChan posted...

I wonder how we would rule that

my first instinct is thats a scum win

but I dont know

Good play. Smart town.
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I like how people are saying that when we have multiple times in the past someone voted with hust one # sign on purpose to try and trick someone. Was never deemed illegal here. It is very resourceful and worked. Play to win. And he deserves the win. Nothing more than faking a scan. It was well done.
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Okay question

does it change things if instead of doing ##ARTL he did #arti

doing an improper format on purpose
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Wow almost STP same content corrik
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# is a clear visual thing. Got to be sharp.

I and l look the exact same that's cruel.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

# is a clear visual thing. Got to be sharp.

I and l look the exact same that's cruel.

And I hear that. But, it is what the system was made around. He just used all the tools at his disposal. You know from mercs very well.about using all the tools at your exposal.

Trying to trick someone with a 1 # sign vote versys trying to trick someone with a spelling is no different.

That would never fly in our system as we have rules stating if it is clear who u intended to vote for it counts. That was not the rule there apparently and that is not the town players fault.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

That is 100% a scum win.

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Just to be clear, the person's username was Yeti and the vote was for Yetl. (like Arti to Artl)

This isn't an I being switched for an l. It's an i switched to an l.

Give us your thoughts and impressions of playiing Dels. how do you think you played, did you feel these guys were pretty good? Give us some details
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Corrik posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

# is a clear visual thing. Got to be sharp.

I and l look the exact same that's cruel.

And I hear that. But, it is what the system was made around. He just used all the tools at his disposal. You know from mercs very well.about using all the tools at your exposal.

Trying to trick someone with a 1 # sign vote versys trying to trick someone with a spelling is no different.

That would never fly in our system as we have rules stating if it is clear who u intended to vote for it counts. That was not the rule there apparently and that is not the town players fault.

They have an unwritten catchall. Also I got docked about 200 gp in mercs for breaking an unwritten rule so ...
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ScareChan posted...

Give us your thoughts and impressions of playiing Dels. how do you think you played, did you feel these guys were pretty good? Give us some details

Essentially, I blinded them with activity.

I posted a lot and wrote really huge paragraphs and just did my best to seem earnest. They all town read on me on day 1 and included me in the top tier of many reads lists. (Along with the other two "best" townies, the ones that ended up winning the #1 and #2 tie spots)

My downfall came from trying to save one of my scummates. We had a really really bad scummate, she was kind of dead weight, but I didn't realize it soon enough. So the lynch on day 1 came down to her and someone else. She was lurking most of the day, then she came in and posted a big rant about how she has a life, she was at work for 16 hours so she couldn't post, and she complained about all the votes on her... and then she specifically complained about my vote on her and called me out for wagoning her. (I actually didn't have a vote on her) She started piling on votes after that.

Anyway, the other person being wagoned was also pretty scummy and I had called him scummy earlier in the day, so I decided to vote him, because being down a scum member on day 1 in this setup is just awful, I felt I kind of had to save her. (My other scummate bussed her, was the first vote on her, and then this same scummate was also the first one to call me scummy and bussed me as well)

But the problem is the two wagons were constantly equal, 3 to 3, then 4 to 3, then 4 to 4, 5 to 4, 5 to 5. Etc. So anyone who votes for the townie there ended up looking bad, because they voted at crucial junctures to save the scum. Someone proposed the equivalent of a "board 8 special" at some point near the end, so I joined it because... fun. But it left me as being the one person who voted for a) the lynched townie and b) the person that got specialed but never c) the scum. So it was a pretty bad miscalculation on my part. I joined the special because I figured it's not something scum would do (I had no actual motivation for it since it only increased the chance of the scum being lynched, since I moved my vote off the townie, and because scum would know they'd look bad for hopping around) but the reverse psychology didn't actually work, they just thought "switching your vote is scummy, scum would do that".

The bad scummate got lynched the next day. The only person she directed any suspicion at all of day 2? Me. She kept insisting I voted her and started the wagon on her, even when I never did, because she was really intent to "distance" herself from me. Then she disappeared for about 36 hours of the day and showed back up in the last 15 minutes and voted me. It was... unfortunate. Everyone saw through it and thought it was clearly distancing.

At this point, half the game had voted for her lynch on day 1, so there were only a handful of people who didn't, and I was one of them. All the people who didn't vote her on day 1 went into the "process of elimination" pool, and like I said, I stood out a bit more because I voted TWO people on day 1 that weren't scum, and never voted for her. (A clear mistake on my part - I still think saving her was the right call, we'd be totally screwed down one scum already on day 1, but I shouldn't have hopped to another wagon because "scum wouldn't do that", they didn't really have that thought process, and it just meant I voted two townies instead of scum.)

As soon as she got lynched on day 2, I had EVERY person in the game calling me scum on day 3. But luckily, we had a really inactive newbie player that no one liked, so they all lynched him instead.

Then day 4 started and people reevaluated their reads (they were sure this newbie guy was scum) and I got away from the spotlight again for a bit.

To be continued...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Corrik posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

# is a clear visual thing. Got to be sharp.

I and l look the exact same that's cruel.

And I hear that. But, it is what the system was made around. He just used all the tools at his disposal. You know from mercs very well.about using all the tools at your exposal.

Trying to trick someone with a 1 # sign vote versys trying to trick someone with a spelling is no different.

That would never fly in our system as we have rules stating if it is clear who u intended to vote for it counts. That was not the rule there apparently and that is not the town players fault.

They have an unwritten catchall. Also I got docked about 200 gp in mercs for breaking an unwritten rule so ...

Well, if they do have a rile regarding it then there is no open to interpretation answer.
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The other important thing is... this newbie that they all thought was scum (because he had never played a serious mafia game before in his life so he wasn't posting lots of walls of text of deep analysis, and was like "fuck this you guys are all tryhards, I don't wanna play) got to L-1 on day 3...

And people said "Don't lynch him, don't end the day" because some people including myself and a few other scum suspects were still catching up and had things they had wanted to say before the day ended.

But this one guy (the guy who voted with the L at endgame) came in and said he didn't care and hammered and basically said "deal with it"

So he hammered a townie 24 hours early and then the next day started and people were very very on his case about it.

So, that, combined with the fact that everyone the day before was confirmation biasing and were SURE I was scumbuddies with the previously mentioned newbie mislynch, got them to reevaluate and look at everything from a new angle.

And all but two of the people who were calling me scum the day before, re-made their lists and moved me up to neutral and had other people they wanted to lynch instead.

Unfortunately, my final scumbuddy was intent on bussing me (like, she was the first person to vote the first scumbuddy after her blowup rant, and she was the first to start calling me scummy on day 1 when everyone else thought I was town), and there were still two people who thought I was scum. So as the day starting winding down, I got those three votes, and no one else was really confident enough either way so I just kind of became the default lynched. But the people who were feeling better about me didn't want me lynched, they started a counter wagon and it got to 3 votes, but that person voted me to put me at 4. So. I died 4-3. Would've lived if I wasn't bussed for sure, but it's fine, my scumbuddy ended up getting to the end because she bussed, and then she "won*".

It's a pretty impressive result when you consider how bad our first scumbuddy was. She actually scumslipped on day 2. She was trying to paint me as scum, and she said "Dels is clearly scum because he saved me from being lynched." Of course, the only reason I'd be scum for that is because she's scum. So it was, uh, a clear perspective slip. But people actually didn't notice it.

I take most of the blame for being lynched, simply because, as I said, it was my fault for not knowing how to handle this dead weight scumbuddy. I didn't know if I should save her or not on day 1, and then I couldn't handle her awful distancing attempts on day 2, so... it's my fault. But at the same time, BOTH of my scumbuddies (the setup was 3 scum 12 vanilla) tried to bus me hardcore from day 1. So... It wasn't entirely because of my own play that I got lynched.

Obviously, many of the players in the game agree that I played well, because they voted me as tied 2nd best player. (Which I honestly wasn't expecting because, well, I got lynched) I can't really speak too much about my own play other than giving you the general summary of my arc in the game, but Para was reading it as well so he can probably explain from a more outside point of view what it was like to watch.

Corrik posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Corrik posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

# is a clear visual thing. Got to be sharp.

I and l look the exact same that's cruel.

And I hear that. But, it is what the system was made around. He just used all the tools at his disposal. You know from mercs very well.about using all the tools at your exposal.

Trying to trick someone with a 1 # sign vote versys trying to trick someone with a spelling is no different.

That would never fly in our system as we have rules stating if it is clear who u intended to vote for it counts. That was not the rule there apparently and that is not the town players fault.

They have an unwritten catchall. Also I got docked about 200 gp in mercs for breaking an unwritten rule so ...

Well, if they do have a rile regarding it then there is no open to interpretation answer.

This is the rule that was debated:

4. Do Not Exploit Loopholes

You are expected to abide by the spirit of the rules, not merely the letter. If you are misusing the rules in bad faith then severe action will be taken. (Likewise, if we believe a player broke the letter but not the spirit of the rules, we may be lenient.)

It's all explained here:
http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/8685-Season-4-Game-5-So-You-Think-You-Can-Be-Super-The-Mafia-Championship?p=1225505&viewfull=1#post1225505

You can debate whether or not this counts as a "loophole".

ScareChan posted...

Give us your thoughts and impressions of playiing Dels. how do you think you played, did you feel these guys were pretty good? Give us some details

As for the question, were these guys pretty good?

I touched on this earlier, but the answer is basically no.

165 communities were invited to play in this event.

This included many communities that do not play mafia anywhere near as "seriously" as we do. As in, players who come from communities where days last 50-100 posts, where people don't do any scumhunting, they just rely on power roles, games where vanillas don't exist, etc.

In my own game, as well as many others that I looked at, there were many players of this type.

And when you consider that the setup was 3 scum, 12 vanillas... There was a lot of "culture shock", you could say.

We had a pretty good number of mislynches and distractions available to us, purely from the players who were like "fuck this, this is too much, you guys are reading the things I say and trying to find ways to make them scummy, you're all jerks, etc etc etc" (sadly one of them was my own scumbuddy but whatever)

The two townies who were voted #1 best player and tied #2 best player with me were very good players. As a fun side note, we never nightkilled either of them, and this is why our game went down as being the best game out of all 11 of them - Every other scumteam killed the best town players on nights 1 and 2, so many of the games died out by the end and became inactive slogs with only the worst players left alive.

Besides those two, there were another small handful of players who I also thought were quite good, and then the rest were... they were fine, and many were fun to play with, and they tried their best, but I'd say the average play level was lower than the play level you'd find in, for example, Suprak's most recent game.

Delseban posted...

You are expected to abide by the spirit of the rules, not merely the letter.

lol
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Well to be fair Supraks recent game was pretty high level

Are they more comparable to the forum mafia crew
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Guess I'm in the minority here, but I'd give that win to town. Town deceived scum, why should town be punished for that?


Though if a rule was added to prevent that in the future, so be it. But you absolutely should not be punished for "breaking" an unwritten rule(Unless it falls under common sense like obviously not being able to shoot someone in a competition).
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ScareChan posted...

Well to be fair Supraks recent game was pretty high level

Are they more comparable to the forum mafia crew

They were... not what you'd expect from "champions", basically. A bit less than half of them were clearly in over their heads. The other half had a few standouts who were amazing, the rest were just generally competent, probably about as good as many of the vets here. I don't really know how to compare it any better than that.

Dark Young Link posted...

Guess I'm in the minority here, but I'd give that win to town. Town deceived scum, why should town be punished for that?


Though if a rule was added to prevent that in the future, so be it. But you absolutely should not be punished for "breaking" an unwritten rule(Unless it falls under common sense like obviously not being able to shoot someone in a competition).

It's against the spirit of the game. Mafia is about deception, sure. But it's supposed to involve conversing with people and comprehending English, not parsing syntax.
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Mafia is a game about lying through speech, not through action - that's the best way I can sum up my feelings. Again, the only reason this even worked is because the bot is automated - a manual count would have picked up that vote as if it were a normal vote. Abusing the bot's mechanics to trick someone is not in the spirit of the game.

Anyway, from my perspective the players in Dels's game were fairly good - I could tell what he was doing with not nightkilling the good players, taking out some okay-but-not-as-active players, so that helped the game's activity a lot, but there were multiple people in that game who I would be happy to play with. Some of the other games were much worse - I could go on about how awful game 11 was for days. Town got completely swept by scum, 5 mislynches in a row - and town just sleepwalked to a loss. It was a disaster. Dels's game by comparison had a fair bit of good analysis.

Wow I wouldn't even participate in the wild card game after getting screwed like that lol

You handled it really well Dels. I would have told them straight up that it was a stupid ruling, even if I was town in that game. That's just a pathetic move
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MZero11 posted...

Wow I wouldn't even participate in the wild card game after getting screwed like that lol

You handled it really well Dels. I would have told them straight up that it was a stupid ruling, even if I was town in that game. That's just a pathetic move

There were a lot of people doing it for him, honestly.

It doesn't really matter though - both the players in the game AND the jury recognized him as a top 3 player in the game, despite the fact that he was lynched d4

No one voted for "red13n" in Suprak's game that recently ended, all the votes were for just "red"

Town No Contest IMO
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MZero11 posted...

No one voted for "red13n" in Suprak's game that recently ended, all the votes were for just "red"

Town No Contest IMO

This is actually exactly WHY scum should have won in Dels's game. Voting for "red" counts as a vote for red13n because voter intent matters, just like in Dels game, "Yetl" should be a valid vote for "Yeti". It just wasn't, because the bot is pedantic and doesn't recognize anything except a correctly spelled name.

It WAS pointed out that someone could innocently misspell a name and run into a problem, but A) that's clearly not what happened, the player admitted so himself and it's obvious anyway and B) that's why they immediately fixed the bot so it would put a big warning box on invalid votes.

None of the votes were deliberately misleading. Also the votes were counted by humans.

(in Suprak's game)
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Someone is gonna vote Vl and throw everybody off
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Bump

Good luck Dels, show em what b8 is made of!
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When's the next game
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