Buff The Mafia

[robertlinke]

mafia has no chance of winning unless town gets abolutely stupid.
it needs a buff, or town needs to be nerfed, it's no fun like this anymore.
mafia is getting desperate so they will just do shit at random, to see if they can find retri or jailor early, which almost never works.

a good change would be to have neutral chaos instead of neutral evil in ranked/ranked practice. this way there is more killing potential, or a the chance for a GA or something.
another good change would be to bring ambusher into classic.

or drop the chance for retri and transporter a bit.
or give mafia a new role, a failed doctor who now works for organised crime, who can heal someone by getting the correct thing at a mini game, like pirate has.

but whatever you do, maf needs to be buffed

[Descender]

(neutral chaos instead of neutral evil)
(vampire instead of jester/exe)
(please no)

[Knuffeldraak]

Tbh, this is more something that has to do with the meta rather than how roles originally work. It is very hard to work around the tp/lo jailor meta.

I think the problem lies at that there is always a guaranteed jailor. Imo, it should be 2 town killing rather than a guaranteed jailor.

[Villagerlover]

Tbh, this is more something that has to do with the meta rather than how roles originally work. It is very hard to work around the tp/lo jailor meta.

I think the problem lies at that there is always a guaranteed jailor. Imo, it should be 2 town killing rather than a guaranteed jailor.

^
This is only a part of the problem.
On top of the already strong jailor meta, a really good chunk of the mafia roles are next to useless most ranked games. Framer, Forger, Disguiser and Mafioso have no real affective ability of their own that contributes a whole lot except for very rare scenarios.
If we could find a way to buff those mafia roles and make them more direct while also implementing a new "gimmick" for the mafia as a whole, then the mafia could finally stand a chance against an ultimate-meta town. By "gimmick", I mean something like how the Coven have the Necronomicon. In my opinion, I think the gimmick for the Mafia should be Tactical Mafia kills.
This means that instead of the whole "Godfather/Mafioso take on the kill, and if one gets roleblocked, the other one carries out the kill"...yanno, the thing easily exploited by repeatedly jailing/roleblocking the same mafia members over and over....we instead have a new system where any member of the mafia could take the kill for that night in exchange for their regular night ability. This alone would help mafia roles have a "backup" and interesting mechanic to fall back on incase they find themselves unable to do anything super useful for the night. It also opens up new abilities for the Mafioso and Godfather as well.


Overall, yes, town is powerful, but the mafia themselves could really use a kicker in my opinion.

[Kombinator1991]

Or maybe people just should try at least as evil roles! I see far too often people leaving as maf., and NK early, or dying really fast. Like diguiser gets jailed, and exed on n2 without being called out. Really the only way i can imagine this is, that he claimed mafia member in jail, or asked to be exed.

The role list could use an any role, but mafia should be buffed by altering the weakest mafia roles instead of changing the role list.

I would remove an RT or TI, and switch it into any.

Disguiser desperately needs to be buffed. Right now it's really weak. There are many great ideas about making it stronger in the role ideas. From going as a sort of "mafia ret." to messing with TI, and even lookout results.
Forger could use a buff since using full potential requires not just great skill, but also great luck. You need to learn target's role, then target must not give all the info in chat before, or townies must be unskilled enough, then the target must die for your forgery, and there must be no spy, or lookout on target. Again lots of good ideas on forum. Most common is the ability to forge target's role along with will.

[wozearly]

I would remove an RT or TI, and switch it into any.

I too want the outcome of a supposedly competitive game mode to be strongly impacted by random chance. Why this is even STILL a debate, I don't know.

I can honestly see why devs are scared to take on the opinions of the ToS community.

Ah, Flake, you know I respect ya...but it's still a debate because it holds merits as well as flaws. The negative and positive impacts of random chance, for individuals, cancel out over the long-term precisely because of the nature of random chance.

In the short-term, it remains a relatively straightforward change that would disrupt elements of the Town meta that rely overmuch on predictability of roles as well as the more nebulous issues around confirmability. I agree that there are alternative ways to get to the same place by different means, but these typically involve drastic surgery to the balancing and/or alignment of multiple roles and require further reworks to the rolelist; the epic rebalancing rework thread built by yourself and Basic4Life is a case in point. There is a risk that the perfect becomes the enemy of the good in such a situation.

There's also a more fundamental question about what type of game ToS is, and the role of randomness within it, which has a huge impact on how people view balancing. Some would prefer it to be more like chess - a fundamentally even starting point where predictable individual player actions will dictate victory in the overwhelming majority of circumstances. Others consider it to be more like poker - where an uneven starting point is expected and chance plays a pivotal role, with the way you act, react, interpret, guess and influence using the hand you're dealt against the hands you're facing is a key determinant of success.

Both are, objectively, competitive games and both have an entirely different relationship with chance. It's entirely reasonable to make the case for turning Ranked in ToS more towards the Chess model, but it's always been a false argument to say that competitiveness can only be achieved if randomness is eliminated.

[BasicFourLife]

I would remove an RT or TI, and switch it into any.

I too want the outcome of a supposedly competitive game mode to be strongly impacted by random chance. Why this is even STILL a debate, I don't know.

I can honestly see why devs are scared to take on the opinions of the ToS community.

Ah, Flake, you know I respect ya...but it's still a debate because it holds merits as well as flaws. The negative and positive impacts of random chance, for individuals, cancel out over the long-term precisely because of the nature of random chance.

In the short-term, it remains a relatively straightforward change that would disrupt elements of the Town meta that rely overmuch on predictability of roles as well as the more nebulous issues around confirmability. I agree that there are alternative ways to get to the same place by different means, but these typically involve drastic surgery to the balancing and/or alignment of multiple roles and require further reworks to the rolelist; the epic rebalancing rework thread built by yourself and Basic4Life is a case in point. There is a risk that the perfect becomes the enemy of the good in such a situation.

There's also a more fundamental question about what type of game ToS is, and the role of randomness within it, which has a huge impact on how people view balancing. Some would prefer it to be more like chess - a fundamentally even starting point where predictable individual player actions will dictate victory in the overwhelming majority of circumstances. Others consider it to be more like poker - where an uneven starting point is expected and chance plays a pivotal role, with the way you act, react, interpret, guess and influence using the hand you're dealt against the hands you're facing is a key determinant of success.

Both are, objectively, competitive games and both have an entirely different relationship with chance. It's entirely reasonable to make the case for turning Ranked in ToS more towards the Chess model, but it's always been a false argument to say that competitiveness can only be achieved if randomness is eliminated.

It can only impact the game negatively. There are absolutely zero positives to it and anyone even considering should seriously take a deep breath and think about what the fuck is wrong with them.

[panapparos]

With the exception of Town having Retri and / or multiple easily-confirmed TS as RTs, I think claims of Town being OP are exaggerated. In fact, if there aren't multiple TS / retri, there are even scenarios were evils start with an advantage such as if Witch is NE and / or jani + consort combo and / or SK as NK.

Don't get me wrong I agree that most of the RMs' abilities are next to useless and I want both them and Mafia in general to be buffed a bit. Still, claims like mafia can't win or it's only through luck are overplayed (unless luck refers to the role list)

Regarding Jailor Meta I would propose this:

Make it so it is harder for Townies to save Jailor from getting killed (something already done to a small degree with the Arso change). This can include:
- Making BGs unable to guard the Jailor either permanently or for the first 1 - 2 nights (BG can still go on Jailor but it has no effect). Jailor at d1 doesn't know if the TP is BG or Doc so he won't claim.
- Making BGs and / or Docs unable to protect Jailor for N1 and / or N2. He can still be transported to safety but transpo isn't guaranteed so Jailors wouldn't claim

The above would also help reduce overall meta and Vfr since outing the jailor through Vfr on day 2 when town can't protect him would be really bad for town.

[fwogcarf]

Mafia doesn't need to be buffed. End of discussion.

[BasicFourLife]

With the exception of Town having Retri and / or multiple easily-confirmed TS as RTs, I think claims of Town being OP are exaggerated. In fact, if there aren't multiple TS / retri, there are even scenarios were evils start with an advantage such as if Witch is NE and / or jani + consort combo and / or SK as NK.

Don't get me wrong I agree that most of the RMs' abilities are next to useless and I want both them and Mafia in general to be buffed a bit. Still, claims like mafia can't win or it's only through luck are overplayed (unless luck refers to the role list)

Regarding Jailor Meta I would propose this:

Make it so it is harder for Townies to save Jailor from getting killed (something already done to a small degree with the Arso change). This can include:
- Making BGs unable to guard the Jailor either permanently or for the first 1 - 2 nights (BG can still go on Jailor but it has no effect). Jailor at d1 doesn't know if the TP is BG or Doc so he won't claim.
- Making BGs and / or Docs unable to protect Jailor for N1 and / or N2. He can still be transported to safety but transpo isn't guaranteed so Jailors wouldn't claim

The above would also help reduce overall meta and Vfr since outing the jailor through Vfr on day 2 when town can't protect him would be really bad for town.

begone thot

[Villagerlover]

Mafia doesn't need to be buffed. End of discussion.

Wrong.

[wozearly]

It can only impact the game negatively. There are absolutely zero positives to it and anyone even considering should seriously take a deep breath and think about what the fuck is wrong with them.

"I do not like it" =/= "there is no merit to it". But, y'know, we've argued our respective points on this across multiple threads. I think we can safely agree to disagree at this point.

[wozearly]

With the exception of Town having Retri and / or multiple easily-confirmed TS as RTs, I think claims of Town being OP are exaggerated. In fact, if there aren't multiple TS / retri, there are even scenarios were evils start with an advantage such as if Witch is NE and / or jani + consort combo and / or SK as NK.

Witch + Janitor + Consort/Blackmailer + SK is probably about as tough as it gets for Town in Ranked, but even those games can suddenly and dramatically go wrong for evils.

I do somewhat agree with you in that most Town roles, broadly speaking, aren't rocking OP abilities on an individual basis. The reason Town can legitimately be considered overpowered, especially at higher ELO games, is the high confirmability and high difficulty to fake a large proportion of Town roles, coupled with a fairly predictable rolelist on the neutral/evil side (which naturally favours the Town), and that by virtue of 3xRT and having more roles in play Town often fields multiple 'dangerous' roles that the Mafia need to shut down, and there can very easily be too many for them to have time to deal with before they're discovered.

Mafia then isn't helped by the underwhelming ability of most RMs to disrupt the Town effectively, and the relative rock-paper-scissors nature of how certain Town roles can utterly counteract lone mafia killers and RMs.

I completely agree that anyone claiming Mafia can't win, at any ELO level, is wrong. But the further up the chain you go, the more a Mafia win tends to require a combination of good luck, excellent play, and a couple of critical mistakes by Town and/or critical deceptions by the evils. Because Town can fall back on meta-strategies, their wins are less reliant on luck or outright excellent plays - averagely good plays, averagely good teamwork and the ruthless logic of elimination down the rolelist is normally enough to secure a Town win, all else being equal.

Giving the RMs more ability to actively and effectively disrupt Town and/or fake Town roles more convincingly, making TS roles in particular less confirmable and more open to faking, and tampering with the predictability of the rolelist would all help rebalance winrates away from the Town and towards the Mafia and Neutral factions.

[wozearly]

-snip-

Cheers for the thought out response - always a pleasant surprise on the forums. There's a lot that we agree on, and while we have our differences, there's only one point I feel actually needs challenging in your post, and that's from a purely statistical perspective. On the rest, I guess we just have different perspectives.

The argument that the impacts of random chance will "cancel out" in the long-term is not correct in this case. It is true that the impact which a player's skill has on their win rate over a large period of games will converge to something which is indicative of their skill level; however, it is not true to say that, with this random chance, a player's skill will have an equal quantity of impact on their long-term win rate than if this random chance were not to be there. So long as this is the case, the impacts of random chance when added to the game will certainly not cancel out in the long-term.

Essentially, randomness has two interactions with player skill – the first is that is slows down our ability to objective measure skill (e.g. via ELO) because it requires a greater number of games to be played for the impact of randomness to be accounted for. The second is in how it ‘feels’ in playing individual games, or over a ‘reasonable’ number of games, with that level of randomness.

Your point relates overwhelmingly to the first impact of randomness, it just accidentally blurred into the second. Unless the entire fields of statistics and probability mathematics are wrong, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re not, then irrespective of the extent of impact random factors have on winrates, if you were to play a near infinite number of games then the random factors will cancel out. And if differences in skill lead to corresponding differences in winrates (which in a competitive game we almost have to assume is true, otherwise what’s the point?), then the difference conferred by skill will also be both visible and stable over the same time period.

In practice, unless big differences in skill have only have small effects on winrate, and/or the impact of randomness is very high, you'd see the cancelling out happen way before you needed to get to infinite ranges. Based on what we've seen in Legacy Ranked and the current Ranked roleset, a couple of hundred games would be enough of a statistical sample for ELO ratings to be pretty robust. Whether ELO is actually a particularly good objective measure of skill for TOS is a whole other conversation, of course.

Either way, the arguments for and against reintroducing Any are almost all centered on the anticipated impact of randomness in short-term gameplay and balancing (ie, the "how it feels to play").

So responding to the rest of your post collectively, I absolutely agree with you that reducing Town’s confirmability is desirable for its own sake, as it would open up more options and discussions for the non-Town roles, and help to reduce Town dominance in higher ELO games. Similarly, and where this thread began, giving the RM roles more options to disrupt or effectively fake Town roles would also be desirable for its own sake, for exactly the same reasons.

Those two approaches should improve both balancing and gameplay in Ranked, and you may well be right that they’d be enough on their own to achieve a more (sufficiently?) fun and competitive situation in Ranked that doesn’t introduce additional randomness. I have no problem at all with that scenario in general - although as always, the devils will be in the detail.

However, all that said, rolelist predictability is undeniably a factor in balancing, strategies and gameplay, even if it's not straightforward to look at completely in isolation. A key reason the Janitor is considered amongst the more effective RMs is because it interferes with Town’s ability to use the predictability of the rolelist to their advantage, slowing down their ability to understand which roles belong to RT versus fixed categories and helping the Mafia select claims which make that distinction more difficult.

It’s very easy to show that the Classic list is far too predictable, and All Any far too chaotic, to serve as a challenging rolelist for Ranked gameplay. However, the effect of changing current ranked to, say, a 4xRT 1xTI variant is less clear cut.
On paper, the extra randomness should favour non-Town roles. In practice, as we saw during the testing of rolesets before the new Ranked list, it also had some odd side-effects like making Exe and Mafia TI claims a lot less believable. It also increased the chances of Town being able to field unusually powerful and/or confirmable combinations. Once again, there are tweaks to Town roles – particularly confirmability – that would have a substantial impact on what this does to gameplay and balancing. Either way, the relationship between randomness in the rolelist and beneficiaries amongst Town / non-Town factions is a complex one.

The issue I was flagging about rolelist predictability primarily relates to Town being able to ‘know’ that there is only one Neutral Killing, only one Neutral Evil, and exactly four Mafia with one Mafioso and one Godfather. This knowledge is particularly useful to the Town – knowing that the Jester is dead, for example, prevents its passive effect on discouraging lynching and additionally rules out the possibility of TIs being Executioners.

One of the advantages the Any role presented was that through each game Town couldn’t be certain exactly how many evil roles were in play, or exactly what their makeup might be. While working down the rolelist was effective, and it should be effective, that degree of uncertainty made it somewhat less easy for Town to apply the same metagame to all situations. The way that this has encouraged very formulaic play amongst both Town and Mafia is actually one of my bigger gripes with the new Ranked list. The strategies required and approaches available for players of all factions were more varied when Any was part of the mix. While the Vampires are not ideally suited for Ranked, they serve as a fantastic example of how a relatively uncommon situation could force both Town and Mafia to approach the game very differently once they became aware of it.

While I completely acknowledge that introducing Any is not a silver bullet to solve all of Ranked’s challenges, and by its nature increases randomness in gameplay over the short-to-medium term, I feel its removal was a loss to ToS Ranked as, first and foremost, a game – and that while the current Ranked set is more “competitive”, the level of skill required to be successful is both lower and too geared towards learning and applying one or two consistent cookie cutter strategies repeatedly, because the variety of situations that needed a different approach has been significantly cut down. Reducing confirmability and boosting the RMs would help give the Mafia more options, and leave them utterly stuck in fewer situations, but I'm not convinced it would fully solve this.

I feel we do agree on a lot about what isn’t working so well in Ranked, and on a number of things that could be done to improve it. We just disagree on whether the benefits of introducing Any outweigh the drawbacks of the increased short-term randomness it brings, and to what extent that additional randomness would, in practice, reduce the impact of skill in determining the outcome of Ranked games. I don't think either side really has the evidence to call it either way, and we'd need to see it tested during an off-season - not likely to be something the Devs put on the table any time soon.

However, I do take issue with the implication that only fools and lunatics would consider adding Any to have any justifiable merits at all.

[MoustachioMario]

With the exception of Town having Retri and / or multiple easily-confirmed TS as RTs, I think claims of Town being OP are exaggerated. In fact, if there aren't multiple TS / retri, there are even scenarios were evils start with an advantage such as if Witch is NE and / or jani + consort combo and / or SK as NK.

Don't get me wrong I agree that most of the RMs' abilities are next to useless and I want both them and Mafia in general to be buffed a bit. Still, claims like mafia can't win or it's only through luck are overplayed (unless luck refers to the role list)

Regarding Jailor Meta I would propose this:

Make it so it is harder for Townies to save Jailor from getting killed (something already done to a small degree with the Arso change). This can include:
- Making BGs unable to guard the Jailor either permanently or for the first 1 - 2 nights (BG can still go on Jailor but it has no effect). Jailor at d1 doesn't know if the TP is BG or Doc so he won't claim.
- Making BGs and / or Docs unable to protect Jailor for N1 and / or N2. He can still be transported to safety but transpo isn't guaranteed so Jailors wouldn't claim

The above would also help reduce overall meta and Vfr since outing the jailor through Vfr on day 2 when town can't protect him would be really bad for town.

I like the idea of making Jailor untargetable by bg and have mayor untargetable by doc

[BasicFourLife]

With the exception of Town having Retri and / or multiple easily-confirmed TS as RTs, I think claims of Town being OP are exaggerated. In fact, if there aren't multiple TS / retri, there are even scenarios were evils start with an advantage such as if Witch is NE and / or jani + consort combo and / or SK as NK.

Don't get me wrong I agree that most of the RMs' abilities are next to useless and I want both them and Mafia in general to be buffed a bit. Still, claims like mafia can't win or it's only through luck are overplayed (unless luck refers to the role list)

Regarding Jailor Meta I would propose this:

Make it so it is harder for Townies to save Jailor from getting killed (something already done to a small degree with the Arso change). This can include:
- Making BGs unable to guard the Jailor either permanently or for the first 1 - 2 nights (BG can still go on Jailor but it has no effect). Jailor at d1 doesn't know if the TP is BG or Doc so he won't claim.
- Making BGs and / or Docs unable to protect Jailor for N1 and / or N2. He can still be transported to safety but transpo isn't guaranteed so Jailors wouldn't claim

The above would also help reduce overall meta and Vfr since outing the jailor through Vfr on day 2 when town can't protect him would be really bad for town.

I like the idea of making Jailor untargetable by bg and have mayor untargetable by doc

no

[MicrowavedSalad]

I think the other way around, the mafia has a massive benefit over the town: knowing for sure who is on your side, and who isn't.

The mafia can easily take over a town (in ranked anyway) if the jailor/tk isn't too bright. And sadly, iv'e seen my town go to hell immediately after the one or two smart people who actually ask questions die.

[MicrowavedSalad]

I think the other way around, the mafia has a massive benefit over the town: knowing for sure who is on your side, and who isn't.

The mafia can easily take over a town (in ranked anyway) if the jailor/tk isn't too bright. And sadly, iv'e seen my town go to hell immediately after the one or two smart people who actually ask questions die.

Trying to draw a conclusion on the overall utility of Town and Mafia based on low level of play from either or both sides is quite silly. The inherent advantages or disadvantages of either faction are going to be most apparent at a high level of play, so it makes far more sense to draw a conclusion based on the assumption that all players are highly and equally skilled. It is easy to see that Town has far higher inherent potential utility than the Mafia by looking at higher levels of play.

I guess that makes sense, but I still feel that it's balanced enough to have a fair game (given that everyone is exerting the same levels of skill and wit) between the fact that townies have trouble confirming each other and mafia is good at fitting in with the townies.

[MicrowavedSalad]

I guess that makes sense, but I still feel that it's balanced enough to have a fair game (given that everyone is exerting the same levels of skill and wit) between the fact that townies have trouble confirming each other and mafia is good at fitting in with the townies.

Yikes. Have you played Ranked before?

lol yeah just that (for me) the town ends up going dumb and killing themselves off while the mafia blends in naturally until its 4v4 and town accepts their doom

[Villagerlover]

I guess that makes sense, but I still feel that it's balanced enough to have a fair game (given that everyone is exerting the same levels of skill and wit) between the fact that townies have trouble confirming each other and mafia is good at fitting in with the townies.

Yikes. Have you played Ranked before?

lol yeah just that (for me) the town ends up going dumb and killing themselves off while the mafia blends in naturally until its 4v4 and town accepts their doom

Are you sure playing Ranked, and not Ranked Practice?
Because Ranked townies are really smart, and know how to do ultimate meta all the time. The mafia have trouble blending in day 1 because the town finds ways to single out the random town slots for that particular game...

[BasicFourLife]

I guess that makes sense, but I still feel that it's balanced enough to have a fair game (given that everyone is exerting the same levels of skill and wit) between the fact that townies have trouble confirming each other and mafia is good at fitting in with the townies.

Yikes. Have you played Ranked before?

lol yeah just that (for me) the town ends up going dumb and killing themselves off while the mafia blends in naturally until its 4v4 and town accepts their doom

then ur tarded

[Descender]

What gamemode are you playing lmao

[Zyprexa2024]

For the buff for mafia, I would say replace one RM with a Mafia Support (consig, consort, bmer) as Mafia Support has the 3 by far best mafia role, would make people less likely to leave because of a double disg/framer/forger game. I believe this could actually work because we all know how it feels for you to be in a mafia with two framers where everyone but you leaves. I also would say that there should be two NE instead of a NK, becasue only SK can really win and SK still has so many things that should be buffed with it. Also, jester can be a really fun role if you play it right, same with exe. I believe that the invest result for witch means instant death for them, make witch in the invest results along with invest and consig (witch/investigator/consigliere) because of witch's ability to determine roles. this may also need to come with a buff too spy, making spy be able to see who witch visits. But really just maybe. These are all just ideas! But I know that we have all experienced evils leaving, or leaving our selves because we know that in ranked mafia has a 30% ish percent chance of winning and NK has 2%.

[Zyprexa2024]

I have another idea that could go with replacing an RM with MS (mafia support), which is bmer, consort, or consig, give mafia, something like Coven's Necronomicon. Could be an easy buff

[Zyprexa2024]

Tbh, this is more something that has to do with the meta rather than how roles originally work. It is very hard to work around the tp/lo jailor meta.

I think the problem lies at that there is always a guaranteed jailor. Imo, it should be 2 town killing rather than a guaranteed jailor.

I also think that there shouldn't always be a jailor, 2 tks would be nice instead.