Mafia451 Questionaire

Mafia Discussion
#1

These questions are meant to help create a mafia forum that not only meets your needs and wants, but to develop the best Mafia forum on the internet. Parts of the goal will take time, but we can’t even take the first steps without defining what the best Mafia forum should be.

We need your help for that.

But first, let me explain some of our goals.

We want the site to be exceptionally newbie friendly.
We want newbie-friendly games to be fun and casual while still introducing players to how the game works.
We want newbies to be able to join a game right away, not stand in a queue.
We want newbie-friendly games to have interesting and fresh designs, not a cookie cutter design that gets reused year after year.
We want newbie-friendly games to be fairly short in duration, not a multi-month commitment.
We want newbie-friendly games to be interesting and fresh to experienced players, too.
Above all, we want newbie-friendly games to be friendly.

We also want the forum to be welcoming, fun, and challenging for experienced players. We want players to be able to play within their comfort zones when that’s what they want, and to challenge themselves with amazing and scary player lists when that’s what they want. We want members to feel like they can give back to the community by teaching newer players how to play the game.

We want the forum to be a stellar place for game designers and hosts to design and run games that will be respected, appreciated, and fully explored.

And we want to think about every aspect of forum mafia with similar optimism and detail.

This morning, I hit up a few people, including some non-M451 members with some questions about what makes a mafia forum great. It was a good way to test some questions and see if the feedback would be useful. Now Ellibereth, Chesskid, and I want to throw the questions open to everyone who joins M451.

So here they are (plus a bonus question!)

1. What do you like/want in a mafia forum experience?
2. What makes games enjoyable to you?
3. What makes games not fun?
4. What else do you want from your forum community?

If you’ve already answered these questions in discord, please feel welcome (but not obligated) to expound here as well. If you would like to expand on your thoughts via PM we’d love to read what you have to say.

#2
#3
  1. What do you like/want in a mafia forum experience?
    Don’t Know
  2. What makes games enjoyable to you?
    Everyone getting involved in the game, not just hanging around to make up the numbers
  3. What makes games not fun?
    Bullying Tactics, especially Tunnel Tracking bullying tactics
    Lying as an accepted town tactic
  4. What else do you want from your forum community?
    Don’t Know
#4

1. What do you like/want in a mafia forum experience?
A community of friendly players who are seeking a fun enjoyable game of mafia, with the added potential of making friends along the way.
2. What makes games enjoyable to you?
Entertaining players, interesting setup, solid moderation.
3. What makes games not fun?
Ellibereth.
4. What else do you want from your forum community?
Free cupcakes and a place to lynch Ellibereth.

#5
  1. What do you like/want in a mafia forum experience?
    I like hanging out with nerds.
  2. What makes games enjoyable to you?
    Shit posting
  3. What makes games not fun?
    When players overtly don’t care about the outcome of the game
  4. What else do you want from your forum community?
    Finding people to play games other than mafia is nice.
#6

  1. good community, both socially and competency wise. as in, not a bunch of jackasses but also not a bunch of awful players.

  2. I’m competitive. games are not enjoyable to me when they’re just hiking around unless it’s a game that obviously is meant to he lighthearted (all hydra, shut up and vote, etc)

  3. too many lurkers. too many replacements. oversensitive players or mods, and also the other side aka toxic gamestates.

  4. it’s not hard to make this the best mafia forum ever Kappa, ms and mu both have a shit ton of flaws and no other mafia focused site is even worth mentioning. also, get a mod team that doesn’t ping you to answer questionnaires that only contain stuff you’ve discussed with them in the last week.

2 Likes
#7

  1. I’m not sure how to answer this. I’m more or less indifferent to anything outside of the content of a game.

  2. Games are enjoyable when they provide a puzzle to be solved or manipulated.

  3. Games are less enjoyable when the game instance itself is largely irrelevant, and the conclusion of the game is driven largely by who signs up and what alignment they receive, or by the whim of the mod.

  4. You guys should join the galactic puzzle hunt with us >.>

#8
  1. Can I mod a game with a playerlist that will entertain me? If so I’m happy modding wise (I want to be able to mod basicly)
  2. this for both playing and modding:
  1. MStowns.
  2. A Community.
#9

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 2000000000 hours unless flagged)

#10

MStowns lul

#11

no one wants ms towns.
no one.

#12

How do we avoid having or being towns we don’t like playing with?

I think every mafia forum I’ve ever played on has frequently bemoaned their towns.

#13

if I had to guess, I think MS towns are bad for two reasons.
A. There’s a bigger influx of newer players and replacements and the older players have basicly stopped playing the game.
B. Smaller Insular Communities tend to have higher town winrates because meta.

Like its not a deadline or plurality/majority lynch problem. If anything, Longer deadlines + Majority is benefical for town, and MS towns are still bad. I think the silent killer here is meta.

#14

The MS community in general has a glaring lack of capacity to engage in productive discussions with one another. Too often you have individuals who believe they are the one sole truth and/or take any challenges to their viewpoints as a personal affront (being scumread is also often a personal attack).

TBH the way I see it is as more of a problem from a societal level, with the trend of people steadily being unwilling or unable to engage in conversation/ideas/views that differ from their own. The reflection of this on MS.net can be observed quite often, where instead of having a healthy debate about a given case, individuals often devolve into attacking one another. Granted, it’s human nature to be unwilling to admit fault in oneself, but that does not explain the drastic decline in game quality on MS over the years.

Of course, there are also other reasons unique to the MS play quality problem.

#15
  1. What do you like/want in a mafia forum experience?
    Entertaining games in a friendly atmosphere.
  2. What makes games enjoyable to you?
    I find 15+ players improves games. I’ve played a lot of games with less than 10 and find they are less enjoyable (still played, because I am addicted.)
    Also like games with interesting themes, and with interesting or novel twists. Some game mods are spectacularly good at this, and usually (IME) their games get more players.
  3. What makes games not fun?
    Mod not paying attention, poor design, absentee players.
  4. What else do you want from your forum community?
    I dunno, friendly people?

I am not an MS player. Signed up a few years ago, couldn’t hack the newbie queues and loooonnnnggg days and nights because I have no patience. I come from ten+ years of playing on forums where mafia is a secondary consideration, and the mafia culture has mostly embraced 24/12 days/nights.

There is a core of players from this culture that I’m extremely familiar with, have played with for years. We’re almost beyond meta play because we’ve all had to vary our styles to offset our meta. That does not mean we’re great players! I’d consider myself an average player on any forum I’m familiar with. It does mean my play may look a bit different from MS play.

#16

tbh I really don’t expect everyone to be nice in mafia game, and I totally expect ad hom and drama now and then in mafia games, for it is a game of paranoia and deception. Paranoia WILL get to people negatively, and it really shouldn’t be surprised to see some rage flying around now and then.

However, all these stuff CAN be prevented if everyone realize that this is, in the end, just a game (a concept that can be easily forgotten by few people), and realize that their actions can ruin the fun for others. Simply realizing it and keeping it in mind will probably help players a lot to naturally withhold such actions, as long as they respect others.

#17

The occasional rumplestiltskin is tolerable. Rather than worrying about cranky players, it usually works to just play the game and keep note of anything actually game relevant that player contributes. TBH I’m thinking of a particular paranoid player who’s actually good at the game, but is perpetually pissed off. YMMV.

#18

I don’t know how to like posts yet but I agree with this 100%

#19

1. What do you like/want in a mafia forum experience?
A social and non-toxic community where I care about the people in the game and I don’t feel like people are just playing around each other instead of with each other.
2. What makes games enjoyable to you?
When everyone wants to play in the mafia game. Really often in mafia I find large chunks of the player list don’t actually want to play and it effects everyone’s experience as a whole very negatively.
3. What makes games not fun?
Both toxic behavior and players who are overly sensitive drag the game as a whole for everyone involved. The latter I find hurts the game more then the former. Although I wouldn’t say I am immune to getting mad in game.
4. What else do you want from your forum community?
I feel like this is more or less answered?
Automated moderation is so nice for stuff like normals/opens.

#20