Don't forget people play FJ because you have a 2/3 chance to roll town and win 70 points or whatever. I can't believe a and d isn't free but that garbage is

Pond says

Thanks for the awesome write-up on this, Giga. Was really intriguing and great to read.

Np bud

also worth noting that people will change how they play setups not just for the sake of change, but because everyone knows how to play them so change can upset the balance and give you an advantage.

jan2.0 is a good example. in 2018-19 everyone knows that janitor CCs cop, everyone knows that nilla gets lawed, and everyone knows that when cop or doc is dead, you don't cc.

but a few years ago, janitor claimed regardless, and his code would tell the nilla whether to claim, leading to a double cop situation when the real cop had been janned. other times it would be a faked guilty test where you sacced your nilla to get the real cop lynched. alternatively, you can not claim at all, casting doubt on whether the town has a live doc or cop at all.

these aren't common plays now, but occasionally they get thrown out just to mess with people, and it works because people don't remember them. and sometimes when it works enough, it becomes the new standard.

the one i see this happening with most is lawing your janitor, letting the nilla be seen as a miller, and convincing the town they don't have a mislynch. i ran on jan2.0 early this last year, and i forced my teammates to law the janitor every game, and we won because of it. now, the majority of players still law the nilla, but a lot more are lawing the janitor than were a year ago. i'm not claiming credit, i stole the idea off someone else i played with, but it's worked well because it goes against what people expect.

Thanks for the awesome write-up on this, Giga. Was really intriguing and great to read.

dude

guns

frontierjustice has been and always will be a n1 coinflip setup for people to lazy to be bothered to scumhunt

Dag says

town can win D1 with a good sheriff lol

If a blue dies N1, town should be able to win with a good sheriff. If a PR dies N1, mafia should be able to win easily. N1 has such a big impact on the game in this setup moreso than most other setups

town can win D1 with a good sheriff lol

As for FJ 2.0, it's already mechanically scumsided, but the issue has been compounded due to consistent poor Sheriff play and town play over a number of years. It's poor play, laziness, & lack of cooperation that causes this much of the time, but people don't feel a need to care about fixing those things, despite the win percentages, due to it being simple, fast, and having a gun. In other words, people think that it's fun.

I just want to talk about that image a bit more:

JFK (2017) is the eighth-most played setup in site history. It has been around for two years, and with 28,195 plays has over 10,000 more plays than 163 (2008), SDS (2008), and BV (2009)--three setups that have been around for over a decade each, and used to dominate competitive rounds, or at least garner a lot of plays back then.

Jan 2.0 (2010) is the most popular competitive setup in history with 34,076 plays. In second is VDLI (2010) at 25,988, and in third is "this setup is bad and should not be p" (2014), with 21,838 plays. A setup originally intended as a joke and as a half-assed replacement to A&D, it is now the third most popular setup in competitive mafia history. Is it a bad setup? I don't really know. The way people play it can dictate that judgement for a setup, much of the time. It's a bit telling on the types of setups that people have liked playing over the past 4 or so years, in my opinion--setups with guns.

Guns and Hookers will pass Classic Mafia in 2019, if not very shortly into 2020 at the rate it's going now--and eventually, Fancy Pants as well, barring a sudden shift in setups people enjoy playing. It's all about guns now; it seems like the most played setups in most rounds, as well as the majority of popular competitive setups recently, feature a gun in them.

Granted, in competitive people usually play stuff more complicated than FP/Classic/GH/JFK, but many people who play competitive mainly play these four (three if you don't include the now dead Classic Mafia) red heart setups. They don't want to play something really new or complicated, because:

1. It's a big big big step up from what they're used to in reds
2. Fear of being scolded/yelled at
3. Not having as much fun struggling in the new setups

There's nothing wrong with that--People can play what they want to play. But these days the most played competitive setups are relatively easy to understand, are fun to play, and are usually pretty fast. If you want your competitive setup to be successful, it probably will have to be all of those things.

Creating a setup 6 or 7 years ago is vastly different from creating a setup now, because gameplay is different now. Many old setups have had their winrates shifted over the years; what was townsided in EM 3.0 (circa 2011-2014 or so iirc) might be scumsided now, and it's hard to figure out how a setup will turn because people usually just roll with the first strategy that is given to them as being the "right" strategy. Sometimes, a setup is never played optimally simply due to people never changing how they play it. A good example of this is A&D, where claiming and lynching Day 1 almost certainly would have made this setup at least less scumsided any of the 4 times it has been created--but now it can't even be played in competitive anymore due to it being too scumsided.

On the other side of the coin, optimal scumplay has also taken a general dip, so the "better way" to play a setup isn't done as often as it should be or that it would have been earlier in this website's history. This is probably because less people are finding better ways to play setups. In fact, sometimes I see players change the way a setup is played for no reason other than to just change how it's played, which usually doesn't work at all. Couple that with the fact that sometimes people are unwilling to listen or change their minds, and it becomes hard for any cooperation to take place in games--it's a team game and when strategy has to be argued in-game, usually bad things happen unless (the right) agreement is made.

When creating a setup, it's really important, now more than ever before I think, to know what the optimal strategy is for town AND for mafia before releasing it, as that ultimately has a very large role in determining how the setup's winrates will swing. If it's overly complicated, you can forget about it--most players don't like thinking very much, as evidenced by:

That's a good point. There are also so many setups which also have very similar problems. For instance, we could go further and talk about how disastrously maf-sided this setup becomes when cop gets N1'd, but so many other setups that are consistently comped have the same problems. I think we just need to put our heads to it and create better setups, but it's so hard to do so.

I think you raise legitimate points, but I can't think of a good enough reason to ban the setup from comp, which is probably why it still is comped over and over. Technically, the lopsided win rate is countered by the high town points, so it is still "fair".