Public service announcement, or “Vulgard’s take on why town loses quite frequently.”
It’s more simple than you think.
THE IMMENSE POSTCOUNTS OF OUR GAMES HERE ARE THE REASON WHY SCUM WINS MORE FREQUENTLY THAN TOWN DOES.
And here’s the explanation why. (Note: I use “villagers/town” and “wolves/scum” interchangeably.)
Site meta is shaped by the more prominent players, and if everyone POSTS POSTS POSTS POSTS POSTS POSTS POSTS, then we’re always going to have 10k+ games where nobody will actually read everything and most people are just going to skim.
It was actually easier to read people and nail wolves when we had fewer posts in our games . Notice how the older mashes where town won (or came close to winning) were sub 10k (the whole game). Now we have at least 50% more than that on average. And wolves keep winning.
I really don’t think that’s a coincidence. It might really be that simple.
Notice how Mafia Academy was a complete town dunk because of post restrictions, except for lolneutralfruitvendor which was a mech misclear. And that was a relatively recent game in comparison to the old mashes.
You’d think that having less information is bad for town , but it’s actually great . Back when we didn’t have games with inflated postcounts, we could use what we had and analyze it deeply. We had the time for it. And we correctly nailed wolf after wolf. Again. This is no coincidence.
Wolves benefit from high postcounts way more than town does. Wolves don’t have to actively look for information in the thread, because most of the time, they already have the information they need. All they are searching for are mechanical things, such as PR softs/claims, etc. Meanwhile, the villagers are almost completely uninformed, which means they need to read the thread more thoroughly.
How do you read a thread thoroughly when there are thousands upon thousands of posts and most of them are alignment indicative in some way? You just can’t. So villagers will skim. And villagers will lose, because they are overloaded with information and miss important things because of it. Scum can, and will, actively bloat the thread with nonsense to prevent town from finding them. Which is why, if you’re a villager, contributing to this is beyond silly.
I really think the postcount thing is the primary reason why villages get dunked on. You can’t possibly analyze everything, which is especially horrendous if the wolves are the ones fluffing the postcount.
We’re bringing up things like “no re-evaluation,” “misclearing and forgetting,” etc., but most of that happens because people can’t reasonably re-read the thread . There’s no time for it, and even if some people do have the time, they don’t have the motivation.
If you have to re-read, village motivation is already sparse, because it most likely means that the wolves are on the cusp of winning. That the early reads and “takes” were mostly misreads, and they have to be re-evaluated or the town will lose. Having a massive thread filled with hyperposting and repeated information just makes it even more difficult for the village and breaks their spirit completely, making them rely on what’s “in the moment” instead. Obviously, they can’t win like this, but the alternative (re-reading the whole thread) appears to be an impossible task and simply doesn’t happen.
You can tell someone to “re-eval” and they won’t. Not because they don’t understand the value of it, but because the thread has over 10000 posts and you have to re-read the thread AND every single living player who’s still in the game. That’s almost impossible. Mafia would have to be your full-time occupation for that to be possible.
And without re-evaluation, without looking at the game holistically, without the ability to comprehend the entire game at once and read people based on everything they’ve done… the village can’t win. It’s not easy to find wolves “in the moment,” especially good wolves. You have to read people thoroughly. And, again… you can’t be thorough when there is too much information in comparison to the time you have. Information overload is real.
And we can remove that overload. This is what town needs to win more frequently. The ability to do their work properly.
You may be an expert at mafia theory, you may know exactly how to read people and how to adapt to the gamestate… but all that knowledge becomes meaningless when you can’t even gather information properly. Fluff, repeated information, shitposting, and more meaningless posts. You skim the thread because of it, and you miss what is alignment indicative. And you keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, praying to find observations which will help you sort people out. And you miss things along the way. It’s not your fault. It’s everyone’s fault.
And even if you do read everything, parsing through what you have read and trying to single out what matters… it takes plenty of effort, time, and motivation. You don’t always have those. The day phase has a limited length. Effort does not equate to efficiency, at least not always. And motivation can lower – especially if you had to go through the trouble of filtering out hundreds of posts which mean nothing.
Hyperposting is bad for the game, and always has been. We have memed about it, we have joked about it, and we have ignored its impact. But I’m done ignoring it, and I hope you are as well. The high postcounts in our games actively favor scum, leading to a notable increase in scum wins in comparison to what used to be the case. I have evidence for it, which I have already mentioned.
Can you change this?
You absolutely can. I was a top poster for months (hundreds upon hundreds of posts) before I switched my attitude. Now I’m in the middle ground at most.
I can show you my game history to prove it. You can do this. You just have to realize that by hyperposting, you are making the game more difficult to play for the entire village.
It’s not an impossible task. It’s not even a difficult one. You just have to realize what the problems are and change your mindset. You may not want to do this, but if you want to improve the village’s winrate and make things easier for other villagers, you should . It’s far easier to analyze things properly when you don’t have hundreds and thousands of posts to read. Which is why the village wins more frequently then. Less is more.
Just think before posting. “Does this contribute in any way?” If it doesn’t, don’t post it.
Can you meme? Yes. On occasion.
Should you meme and post fluff? No. Especially not when you are town.
Stop posting. Start thinking. Thinking first… posting later.
If you scrolled through and you see this message, read my post in its entirety. Without skimming. Skimming is something we shouldn’t become accustomed to. The first step toward better villaging… is to read my entire post here.
If you want our games to be more balanced, read the entire post and try to apply the lessons I’m attempting to teach. By reading the post, you are already making progress. Because you are not skimming. You are reading and thinking .
Vulgard out.
