Discuss how a Mafia rating page should work.

 

This is just a sample with a couple mods as examples.  The intent would be to do it with all players after every game.

it would need criteria.  are we rating on their skill?  their gameplay style?   if there isnt a specific definition for what we are rating, its going to be very subjective.  for example, if someone makes a stupid mistake, they might get a rating of a 1, which in turn could prohibit them from playing in games (or at least restrict it since if they cant play in games, how do they get their rating up to play again?)

I concur with brewers. We need to set the criteria before we roll this out. IMO mistakes shouldn't be punished, this will stop new players from participating. 1 or 2 should be reserved only for those who don't participate in any discussions or just fluff post entirety of the game. Any genuine effort to participate in discussions should get at least a 3 star, with 4 and 5 only reserved for those who initiate or shape discussions and lead the town in scum hunting. But I am still unsure how to rate scum players.

 

Also the rating system should not dissolve into a popularity contest.

We can build a quantitative rating based on game events.

• +5 for being in on the lynch of a scum
• -10 for for recklessly using a vig kill
• +20 for getting lucky with the vig kill and hitting scum.
• +1 for voting no-lynch on day 1

I cant tell if that was a serious suggestion or a lulz one lol 

Totally serious.  If you don't play my way, you shouldn't be playing.

Vote no lynch

I’m so glad to see that most of my concerns are being addressed. Would voting be anonymous? How do we prevent popularity contests. How will newbies ever get to play? Is rating based on skill level or participation? If you play one game badly, but are generally a good player what happens to your score? Does personality count? Some people are more aggressive/abrasive than others. Does a bad player’s evaluation of other players have the same weight as a good player’s evaluation? Does possessing a nice rack automatically add 5 points to your player rating?

Does possessing a nice rack automatically add 5 points to your player rating?

 

Yes.

 

Your other questions, not so easy to answer. 

 

Really I'm not sure this rating system will do much to help. We already have a very good idea of who the more active participants are and who barely participates at all. We discuss it pretty much every game. Also if Rafay was gonna change his style from shaming he would've already. I think the more effective approaches will be raising the required post count a bit more and the community policing itself.

 

The ratings might cause some drama/conflict too, potentially.

 

All that being said. *shrugs* Maybe it'll help a bit. At the very least it'll be kind of interesting to see what everyone gets rated.

 

 

 

 

This wouldn't be a problem if certain...... people.... would pull finger and stop being deliberately inactive. Why don't we just have a system where mods choose to block people from playing based on their own perceptions of inactivity?

Kevin and I (the two most active mods) have agreed that it is not our intention to exclude anyone from playing in our games. We want to encourage everyone to play, old and new players alike because mafia is a lot of fun. However, the amount of enjoyment that any one person gets out of it is directly attributable to the amount of participation they have in my opinion. This is one reason why I will never understand why some people are happy only posting once every seven days.

 

Minimum required post counts should be the baseline in my opinion for allowing people to play in our games. It is something tangible and forces people to at least do something other than lurking for entire game days.

 

I think that a rating system for players would be a nice second step. No matter how we set up this system it is going to be subjective in some form. I don't necessarily agree with the exact examples that Kevin listed above for points (but I think he was joking anyway) but I do think that we could have some general requirements that we expect from everyone in every game and can rate them on after the fact. Things like:

 

• Overall Post Count
• Regular/Consistent Activity
• Contributes to Big Discussions
• Comments on Major Game Revelations
• Post Content (i.e. posting more than simple fluff or saying "I agree with ______" and nothing else)
• Actively Votes
• Etc

These are things that would avoid the "popularity contest" factor because they can be measurable even though there is still some degree of subjectivity involved. All voting can be done anonymously as well.

 

My thought would be to assign a number rating system to the above categories, add together the scores from each category, and give each player an overall game score. Maybe we could simply expect that an individual's overall game score would need to meet X% (maybe something like 50% or 67%) of the overall possible score to be considered for further games.

Some of the criteria TW mentions may be a problem for decent players who choose certain valid strategies ie. to not vote very often because that is their game strategy, but participate actively aside from that, or to people who are vanilla town or nymphomaniacs, etc. That is a concern.

First of all it's great you're coming up with the ideas. You clearly care and want to have enjoyable games .

 

That being said, I'm not sure what would be the purpose of this certain idea. Let's say we made it, people have voted / or stats have been gathered and now we're sitting with the list:

Player A - 84 points,

Player B - 77,

Player C - 67...

 

What can be done with such list? How can we use it?

Some of the criteria TW mentions may be a problem for decent players who choose certain valid strategies ie. to not vote very often because that is their game strategy, but participate actively aside from that, or to people who are vanilla town or nymphomaniacs, etc. That is a concern.

This is why scores would be aggregated based off of numerous categories and not one subjective vote. One score would not affect a particular player's overall game score too negatively/positively because they would be given an overall score. So if your strategy for whatever reason is not to vote very often, that's fine, but you better make sure you are "active" in other ways. If a person has several poor scores in various categories.. well that is why this idea is being discussed -- to address the issues of people not actively participating.

An interesting Idea. I don't know if it will work as intended though. Or side affects. 

An interesting Idea. I don't know if it will work as intended though. Or side affects. 

Everything we do has unintended, often unpredictable side effects, sometimes for the better.

 

I’ll be honest, I have concerns. I think there’s a real chance it could inspire better playing all around. I think it could also lead to people being excluded, which may not be a bad thing, but may not be a good thing. I trust Kev (the soldier of sexy) and TW (our bold, brilliant leader) and I’m interested in seeing how this may be handled. Would it make sense to have a trial period trial period and revisit it after a few months?

I have two suggestions.

 

1) give everyone the max rating now

Give all new comers max rating.

Then at the end of each game, we can conduct a rating period for that game.

Then aggregate it and apply it to the rating.

After a few games, the bad players would go down the list (hopefully)

And the good players stay at the top.

Savvy?

 

2) Implement the rating system from now.

It should not be retroactive.

Regarding new players, they are given immunity from the rating restrictions for the first game.

When their first game ends, they will be rated for that game and that becomes their rating.

Now the community should give leniency to new players when rating them.