Back to Epicmafia

PSA on Selfing for the Clear

deletedalmost 9 years

Hello everyone, I'm Tatami, and you should never self for the clear.

Here is why:

Pros of selfvoting for the clear:

-The clear gets to pick the lynch

-Any reports the clear may have can stay hidden

-Can avoid getting a claim from the lynch

-Can't be blitzed by kick until timer is down

Cons of selfvoting for the clear:

-Virtually no discussion/information and therefore nothing to read off of

-"Can avoid getting a claim from the lynch" isn't really a pro because you should ask for one anyway and if you don't you get your PR lynched for no information

Instead, the clear should lead a lynch, giving flexibility for others to vote how they want until crunchtime:

Pros of the clear leading:

-The clear gets to pick the lynch

-Any reports the clear may have can stay hidden

-Extreme amount of information, discussion, and deliberation

Cons of the clear leading:

-Can result in claims

-Can be blitzed by kick

Where do these two lists leave us?

Selfing for the clear is across the board worse than the clear leading a lynch. The advantages it has-avoiding asking for a claim, less vulnerable to kicks, are not true strengths. Getting claims is fundamentally a good thing and you should be getting it even if there are selfs up. The kicks are fine, both for information, and for the fact that the alternative (clear hammering) means the lynch would have gone through if they got selfs instead of kicks anyway. The blitz, therefore, did no harm-and it, just like the selfs, can only happen after the timer is down.

There are no advantages to selfing instead of letting the clear lead. You get a ton of information out of it, which is extremely valuable, and the cons are ones you get with selfvotes anyway.

Please, please, stop selfvoting for the clear. Have them lead instead.

poser
almost 9 years
in fact, everytime i go with a lynch that everyone is happy with, it's always town or scum being bussed who'd have got lynched anyway(so i gain nothing). that's why attempting to please everyone as a clear fails. but then when you don't care about people disagreeing with you, they end up being douches and voting their FoS, which splits the votes. this is why self voting works.
poser
almost 9 years
ok i'm not gonna read all of this but i skimmed and all i have to say is that whenever i lead i have to deal with whining and complaining which can be stopped by self voting. i've hammered more mafia when i don't get ated or yelled at for my choices
deletedalmost 9 years
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, if the clear really wants to lynch the townie, he'll lynch the townie.
deletedalmost 9 years

Tucker says

Hungover. Exhausted. Last-minute Christmas shopping.

You?


Sound stressful. I'm just relaxing all week.

Tucker says

A) be read only by people who are already aware of this.


You will be surprised.

As for not getting many useful reactions, that hasn't been my experience. Letting people vote how they want and bringing it all back together at crunchtime has been shockingly effective as far as information goes and led to decent results.

The reason I made this thread, by the way, is due to being flamed game after game in Jan 2.0/Basic Variant Day 1 about how selfing is optimal. This was by several renowned players. It is worth noting that none of the scenarios discussed in this thread as possibly optimal places to selfvote instead of getting the clear to lead apply Day 1 in either of those setups.
deletedalmost 9 years
I just read the OP and it's sad to see how much effort you put into a thread that's going to:

A) be read only by people who are already aware of this.

B) people who play EpicMafia.*

The reality is that there's no upside to leading VS hammering in the majority of games because you're not going to gauge any reactions other than 'well ok but im just a blue' and so you're sacrificing the only pro to self-voting (not giving mafia the opportunity to fish) only to do something that's entirely useless.

[*RT-Mafia isn't at all similar to FM, couple that with the apathic feeling people have towards the game you aren't going to get anything worthwhile except a chaingun stream of capital letters, if that.]

E: sure it's worth the time it takes if you're in a high-caliber game with people who are invested in what they're doing, but it's unlikely such players would comply to self-voting in the first place.
deletedalmost 9 years
Hungover. Exhausted. Last-minute Christmas shopping.

You?
deletedalmost 9 years

Tucker says

Hello Tatami.


Hey there Tucker what's shakin' my man?
deletedalmost 9 years
Hello Tatami.
deletedalmost 9 years

moon says

I love making people self cause I get a massive power trip


people self voting gives me a hard-on i won't lie
kianal
almost 9 years
just do what the clear ask! if he want us to self then we self if he wants us to cross you just cross someone you fos easy as that >.>
moon
almost 9 years
I love making people self cause I get a massive power trip
ling
almost 9 years
dont use examples where you show off (wrongly)
TweIve
almost 9 years
I'm simultaneously fighting for the notion that most people will read better than me given more information than me?
ling
almost 9 years
abe, remember our ego talk, pls dont say you are one of the most accurate people
TweIve
almost 9 years
That being said, attempting to get a selfvote-centric clear to lead a lynch often creates enough commotion that it defeats the purpose of getting reads, and oft times it's better to let the conditioned idiot go ahead with his power trip than attempt to rewire their brain to optimal play.

Edit: response to edit: That's a really hyperbolic case and I'd most likely get selfvotes for it. As supportive as I am of leading I still lynch via selfvotes reasonably often.
deletedalmost 9 years

Twelve says

To support the argument of selfvotes means you believe that it's impossible for the other players in the table to read better than you, which means you're incredibly conceited. I often misread and I'm one of the most accurate players on site, read-wise and I hold that an average player on day 4 is likely to have better reads than I have day 1.


Conceit may be a sin, but that does not mean you would be wrong in every case to think that. Also, it doesn't mean it's impossible for them to read better than you-all it would take to validate the answer is that it is sufficiently unlikely for them to read better than you.

Ex. Think of the two most stubborn and worst players you have ever played with. You are in 5 way with a mislynch as a killable clear, they both insist that your top scumread is town and refuse to lynch him or her. They insist that the mafia is your townread and if not him or her, then it's the other. What do you do?
TweIve
almost 9 years
Leading is always going to be better than selfvotes since the additional information you gain from reactions outweighs the minor super-fringe cases where mafia can out the jan (which is probably beneficial to town anyway, since mafia should've coded it by this point and the jan being outed only helps town) or the stalker outing the stalk. 1 in every 1000 games it's going to be worse, but something that's going to be better 99.9% of the time is going to be better 99.9% of the time.

To support the argument of selfvotes means you believe that it's impossible for the other players in the table to read better than you, which means you're incredibly conceited. I often misread and I'm one of the most accurate players on site, read-wise and I hold that an average player on day 4 is likely to have better reads than I have day 1.
deletedalmost 9 years

Hunt says

They do that after the kicks dummy.


Generally yes, you'd be surprised at the amount of people that vote someone and just leave it up while they get lynched but we're assuming optimal play in the other cases so might as well do it here as well.

That doesn't really change my concession, though, as I already admitted it was a con that doesn't happen with selfing (as the chance of a flip does not exist with selfing)
Hunt
almost 9 years
They do that after the kicks dummy.
deletedalmost 9 years

Hunt says

@ tatami- do you think it is good for town to always lead lynches over self voting?

if yes then you are implying that you want the stalker to out the stalk or the janitor to out the jan.


This is a pretty solid counterpoint that I thought of when making the thread, but decided it was a very edge case. To do this requires them claiming mafia and thus forfeiting their chance for the lynch to flip-but it wouldn't flip if they selfed, either.

I would say it depends, as you get exponentially more information from leading, but the value of that vs. the jan/stalk being outed is variable.

That said, I generally do what you do with regards to just taking the selfs if they go ahead and do it while I'm clear, generally only when I'm feeling lazy, but regardless of my alignment I always press for the clear to lead otherwise.
Sardonic
almost 9 years
Fuckng tryhards
Epileptic
almost 9 years

Hunt says

This game isn't about being fair to others.

Hunt
almost 9 years
The conclusion is that-

I will ask for self vote when I want it.

I will lead when I want it. I do it on lylo to see who is giving up. or to fake a guilty.



I will not self vote ever if i am town and i have a strong fos. I will make sure the lynch is between me and my fos. I will force the clear to lead so i can out reads if i am being lynched.
Hunt
almost 9 years
@ tatami- do you think it is good for town to always lead lynches over self voting?

if yes then you are implying that you want the stalker to out the stalk or the janitor to out the jan.


Many of jan2.0 games have been won by town because jan was not able to out that doc was janned.
Giga13
almost 9 years

Tatami says

I'll concede that to some extent. I'm of the school of thought that increased information/discussion is universally better to have as town but in practical play I can see this break down into how you described.

ie. Interpreting that information correctly requires an amount of skill as a prerequisite.


Yeah which is why it matters who's clear as well along with the skill level of each player in the table, and of the whole table combined