So let me just begin by saying sandbox literally created town of salem and throne of lies with its 12+ player setups that involved random roles. Comp and ranked? Not so much. Why is this exactly? Why hasn't the world accepted comp and ranked setups? Yes, I know I'm ahead of my time a little with these claims, but, let me go ahead and inform you ranked and comp people about why nobody out there uses your setups to create their "who did it" games with.
Explaining the Community
I was going to lay the hammer on you comp and ranked guys, but, that would be a huge wall of text. I'm going to make this as short as I can. In the old days, competitive games where played by many players constantly chatting with each other and talking smack without ever actually acting serious, until finally someone lost their patients. At about this time, the person who lost their patients was lynched and almost every time, they were mafia. Now when I play competitive, I can call out every mafia one minute in the game and after that, suddenly I'm instantly being voted by everybody, village loses, and every single person I called out as mafia flipped mafia. Who would of imagined? I even explain my reasoning while trying to have petty talk like in the old days of competitive games. Every competitive game I go to kills my streak because I'm always lynched mafia or not without any real strategy involved. Merely everybody lynches me because they don't know me enough to be comfortable lynching their metagaming friends. Tell me, do you competitive players actually go through life content with the nature of your choices? Knowing that you're all comparable to someone who just awkwardly got caught with their pants down and try to keep going on as if nothing ever happened? You dirty shameless scum.
As for ranked games, I'v been reported for hipfiring and got a violation for it, even though everybody was clear except one guy who happened to be mafia. This happened because apparently the players in that same ranked game, some of which were banned, used discord rumor has it and coordinated with each other to try to allow their friend to farm achievements. The staff who gave me a violation had been staff for months with constant complaints before finally being removed from the game.
Sandbox has people who try hard, but, literally everybody in sandbox who are more encouraged to cheat, seem to cheat less. What caused this to happen? If you don't believe me, when you finally get invited into a ranked circle jerks discord, you'll know what I'm saying. Sandbox cheats way less and even produces "original content" for the game sometimes, being the forefront of what is comparable to R and D on the subject of the dynamics of epicmafia. People go to sandbox to test out game mechanics and improve upon the game or report bugs. They don't go to ranked or competitive. Lucid adds new roles, lots of them, and I have yet to read a single person write "thank you lucid for adding lots of new roles". Pretty much all of the current staff members, I'v seen on sandbox and are pretty chill. People play sandbox and only get reported for hateful comments, real life stalking, and stupid crap you shouldn't do in real life. Nobody gets banned for game throwing because a bunch of cry babies needed a few numbers on their profile and medals. It generally was arguably and still is the best community with the largest group of the friendliest people on the site. Because of how attractive it was, now there are games being made with the sandbox format. People still played to win, but, if people decided to play for meta purpose, it was open instead of people pretending they don't have a grudge against someones 64 by 64 sized avatar and silly random name they found on google.
Closing Statements
So what the hell happened to that good old competitive lobby of people so skilled that you could have a regular old socially awkward conversation with them and suddenly everybody lynches you and you still can't find out how they found out you're mafia? Why has ranked gameplay never felt like it improved? Is it because there isn't a honeypot for toxic people who value the idea of being a "winner"? Why do sandbox players care more about the social aspect of the game while still trying to win without being butt hurt about losing?
