What Makes Mafia Bad?

[JacksonVirgo]

This isn't a suggestion perse and if this fits into another sub, lemme know. I was wondering what makes people hate playing Mafia as bad as they do. I am speaking in general, some may like playing it.

Because the reason I don't like playing it is because it's hard to win when your teammates give up and the Deception roles are pretty weak and they're pretty much useless apart from helping with getting majority.

How about you?


EDIT: I am currently working on coming up with ideas regarding 'fixing' Mafia and making it more fun to play as.

[Voriki]

The game has various roles which offer variety, and all roles are needed to grant a good gaming experience. Being SK or arson or maf or jester is hard, sure, but what would you prefer to have, to have 15 players Town?

Everyone gets a role, some roles are easy, others are hard and challenging, and I believe that's what the makes the game worthwhile. We all need someone to be the bad guy, one day it is your neighbour, the other time it is yourself. And we shall darn well do our best at it without giving up.

[kyuss420]

I hate playing maf because no one listens to good advice like ''that was vet bait, dont visit him'' or '' I know hes jailor, but the TP know that and theyre not dead yet, kill the LO, then BG then the jailor'' - hits a rando or goes for jailor anyway and dies to BG. ''LO saw that guy randomly visit the ret claim, hes the arso, dont waste a night on him'' - attacks them anyway, just to see if they have defence. ''Íts 4v4 and jailor and vig are dead, dont vote 2moro'' - lynches the janitor instead of the NK, to confirm themself as town.

So these days, I just keep my mouth shut, and hope to be promoted fast, before its too late to kill in a decent order that will give a good chance of winning. When you think a few days deep, as evil, you know the game is won or lost by day 3-4, depending on what roles have died, even if it drags out to 8 days, some times its dependant on the luck factor

[Voriki]

I hate playing maf because no one listens to good advice

That's not an issue with the role, but with the team.
I could just as easily say I don't like being town because town is dumb and RB's a confirmed townie and lynches a presumably good role, etc...

[JacksonVirgo]

I hate playing maf because no one listens to good advice like ''that was vet bait, dont visit him'' or '' I know hes jailor, but the TP know that and theyre not dead yet, kill the LO, then BG then the jailor'' - hits a rando or goes for jailor anyway and dies to BG. ''LO saw that guy randomly visit the ret claim, hes the arso, dont waste a night on him'' - attacks them anyway, just to see if they have defence. ''Íts 4v4 and jailor and vig are dead, dont vote 2moro'' - lynches the janitor instead of the NK, to confirm themself as town.

So these days, I just keep my mouth shut, and hope to be promoted fast, before its too late to kill in a decent order that will give a good chance of winning. When you think a few days deep, as evil, you know the game is won or lost by day 3-4, depending on what roles have died, even if it drags out to 8 days, some times its dependant on the luck factor

So you're saying that if your team listens, all Mafia roles would be fun to play as?

[kyuss420]

I hate playing maf because no one listens to good advice

That's not an issue with the role, but with the team.
I could just as easily say I don't like being town because town is dumb and RB's a confirmed townie and lynches a presumably good role, etc...

I dont like playing town, for the reasons you stated. I scroll for evil and nuetral roles constantly, it adds to the fun because you usually win when town self destructs itself, and its also fun to add to the self destruction.

Thing is, the players who leave when they roll evil roles are dumb players. They dont get any smarter when they roll town. When they roll town and dont leave, evils get a slight advantage - you are now an evil role in a town of mostly dumb townies.

Theres plenty of boring town roles that people dont seem to leave as when they roll them...

[kyuss420]

I hate playing maf because no one listens to good advice like ''that was vet bait, dont visit him'' or '' I know hes jailor, but the TP know that and theyre not dead yet, kill the LO, then BG then the jailor'' - hits a rando or goes for jailor anyway and dies to BG. ''LO saw that guy randomly visit the ret claim, hes the arso, dont waste a night on him'' - attacks them anyway, just to see if they have defence. ''Íts 4v4 and jailor and vig are dead, dont vote 2moro'' - lynches the janitor instead of the NK, to confirm themself as town.

So these days, I just keep my mouth shut, and hope to be promoted fast, before its too late to kill in a decent order that will give a good chance of winning. When you think a few days deep, as evil, you know the game is won or lost by day 3-4, depending on what roles have died, even if it drags out to 8 days, some times its dependant on the luck factor

So you're saying that if your team listens, all Mafia roles would be fun to play as?

Yes, with a smart team, the game is fun, even if you do end up losing. It also makes it fun to be town Vs a faction of smart evils. I prefer when my team doesnt have to listen tho, because they already know not to pull dumb ass rando crap.

When youre in games where GF wont kill the TP because ''thats my friend'' or hope to win by randomly targeting people instead of using any logic or foresight makes games unfun. Id happily sit home at night as framer in a dead sheriff game, if GF and mafioso were doing their job.

[Villagerlover]

Mafia supporter here

I actually really enjoy playing as the Mafia because I find it more challenging. I don't care what role I get within the mafia per say, but I'm the sort of guy who always sliiightly liked playing 'evil' roles more often. So I'm a bias.

But honestly, for the same reasons you said OP, the mafia are generally weak and unable to really "deceive" anyone. It sucks being a weak minority against an ultimate-meta majority.
Even if all my teammates are complete dumbasses, I feel like I still do what I can to make it work, especially during day chat. But in the end, the power of the roles themselves and process of elimination (PoE) will usually overrule bad plays if you were to average out some random game outcomes.

Being mafia just means you have a slightly higher chance of losing tbh

[kyuss420]

Being mafia just means you have a slightly higher chance of losing tbh

Yup, and seeing how salty people get when Town loses, with the finger pointing and false gamethrow reporting, one can infer that the slightly higher chance of a loss is what makes Mafia so ''bad'' in most peoples opinions

[KJYKJY1985]

I hate playing as mafia for quite a few reasons.
For starters, you already know who your enemies are, so a huge layer of deductive reasoning is simply removed.
Most of the roles are weak and don't give the player a sense of agency. The Mafioso can't even make decisions on his own and most of the random mafia roles don't have a huge impact on the game. Their abilities aren't as varied or interesting as the town's and the most optimal strategy for a lot of them is simply not using your ability as to not needlessly feed TI information. Your main goal for the most part is to not be suspicious to the town so you can stay alive and just act as one more body the town has to work its way through to keep majority.
The game is also heavily stacked against the mafia. Being outnumbered more than 2 to 1 at the start is huge deal. The game gives the illusion that the mafia is better at killing because they have the option to kill every night and usually no incentive not to take it, but between the Jailor, TK, and potential BGs, as well as the voting power to kill during the day for the first chunk of the game, the town can drop bodies faster than the mafia. Each town death also has the compensating benefit of confirming more town slots, whereas as mafia deaths have no compensating benefits to speak of. If anything, they also help confirm town slots.

[ProvidenceAve]

I do enjoy playing mafia. I think I am pretty bad at false claiming but seem to get away with it enough times for it to stay fun for me.

I don't play ranked but I do watch some high level play on YouTube and there are some challenges with balance that I think contribute to mafia being a negative experience:

1. too many town roles are too easily confirmed, claim space feels too slim. a high elo town can get most claims confirmed by d3, some roles you have to claim d1 or 2 or you are sus, some roles are extremely hard to fake claim. In some cases, town can find incentive to lynch one or two of their roles because it blocks mafia out of all other claim space.

2. if maf loses 2 roles by chance within the first few days sometimes it's can be too hard to recover from. NK can be just complete RNG.

3. if mafia falls behind and gets put in a dire situation, your forced to either make a bold claim or give up. if you make a bold claim and another maf supports you, you're both exposed. mafia very limited working together during the day if they are down.

4. when chaos roles like jester or exe are played poorly, and they often are, the town doesn't actually experience very much chaos.

overall the weakness in the balance is in how the game can snowball in either direction. if maf loses characters in early game, town can snowball. If enough maf survive into late game to get majority with a neutral evil role, the game snowballs in the other direction. There are exceptions but balancing this is tough because it would be easy for a change in rules\roles to swing the game out of balance.