Topic: Mafia LXXXV: Metroid Dread. Game Over! Postgame Breakdown and Analysis Thread.

[Khushrenada]

Day 7, of course, was the wrap-up. MASB investigated GK and got the confirmation that he was Dark Samus and the townie alliance finished their job most likely unaware that they just about lost it in Day 6 with some of their choices.

That's the recap on the host side showing a bit of how things came together and being the one person watching the game progress without the fog of war and what all the various orders and decisions coming in meant.

It is late now so I am going to bed but I do want to post a little bit more about some of my thoughts on what I wanted to do with this game and how things turned out both expected and unexpectedly. Even if I may have covered some things in the breakdown of moves, by all means, throw in your two cents as I would like to see all the perspectives from the players on their feelings of the game and rules and roles.

[Wah]

I seem to recall dead thread saying how good the doctor was hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[ShyGuy]

That was fun!

[that Baby guy]

I seem to recall dead thread saying how good the doctor was hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Did you really? On day 2 I pegged you as the doctor and BeautifulShy as Samus. Unfortunately, I was dead, so I couldn't do anything about it. There weren't any other roles I figured out, but determining two just by watching actions unfold and without being part of the mix isn't all that bad.

As for me, not much to say, but I didn't really trust Pokepal completely. The easiest way to resolve the problem was said mass vote out. The funny thing about the Metroid, as was pointed out at times, is that as long as it stays out of the Samuses' hands, it doesn't matter which side had it. By the end of the game, the winning team would be holding on to it anyway, just by having to kill the other side.

And like RAB said. Why would the mafia choose to investigate vs. Not making a hit? The only reason I can see is to feign inactivity, but since there was an alternative to not making a hit, it did not come across as inactivity. Definitely a bad move there.

I've got to say, extreme kudos to Steefosaurus. Some very nice choices were made. Good job!

[Mop it up]

Thanks for hosting Khushrenada, I know a lot of work went into this! Sorry it was kind of a rocky game.

I'm curious if GK thought ShyGuy and I were the ones with the roles and that's why he went for us first. In some ways it sort of worked out for him, as I definitely would have been pushing to take him out instead of Luigi Dude on that day. Of the three I thought him most likely to be Dark Samus.

This game had a lot going on in private messages, so the rest of us had more influence than it might seem just watching the day thread. So no MVP voting from me as it undermines the efforts of the team as a whole.

I was actually kind of rooting for Dark Samus to run away with the W by the end of things. It would serve some of you right for trying to cheat!

[GK]

I'm curious if GK thought ShyGuy and I were the ones with the roles and that's why he went for us first. In some ways it sort of worked out for him, as I definitely would have been pushing to take him out instead of Luigi Dude on that day. Of the three I thought him most likely to be Dark Samus.

Nah. You two were just kinda random picks honestly. Shyguy simply because I recalled he survived day 1 despite me voting for him. By the time I picked you I had already assumed I wasn't going to win this thing & was sticking it out in hopes of playing spoiler for Kraid since Samus was already out.

My MVP goes to Steef. Fav in-character poster. I was using his AI-suggestions as a voting Waze app a few times. I only targeted him at the last second because I was taking a "scorched earth" approach to my exit.

[Order.RSS]

Whew, way too close for comfort! No way we would've won without Pokepal and BShy outing themselves, or GK taking out TheFleece. Our searches kept turning up more Townies, and our worst-case scenario very nearly occurred - if GK had taken the Energy Tank or Insano's PowerBomb it would've been over. Tremendous amount of luck involved.

Question for the Mafia: when you searched me, why did you not take me out instantly?

My initial plan was to just have fun and talk like a robot. This immediately backfired, and I was almost voted out due to my annoying font colour. Thanks to eJamer we could scramble a tie, and I figured to make lemonade from these lemons.
Sent in a risky play to call Pokepal's bluff. It seemed too obvious to re-use his revealing-my-role strategy 3 times in a row. Turns out he wasn't lying, but I nabbed the Metroid right under GK's nose.

Day 4 I began playing more seriously. Mop It Up discovered a discrepancy in what TheFleece was telling me vs. what he told BShy. Meanwhile, I started a bandwagon on Insanolord, and when he got seemingly no support from fellow mafioso... I reached out. It worked, he told me his role!
Soon after, Lucario hit me up, I was suspicious, but when he told me his role I did the same. I regretted this immediately, when he threw me in a group conversation with MASB, casually outing me.
I was convinced MASB would be the Goon Detective, pretending to be the Townie. Turns out they had Insanolord on board already though, which convinced me to stay. We all shared screenshots to prove our identities, which I realise set a very annoying precedent. Sorry about that everyone.
(For what it's worth, I was still convinced MASB's screenshot was faked, and Khush confirmed he would give people fake ones.) But for all intents and purposes Lucario was basically Nick Fury, assembling his Avengers.

Only problems: we had spent the entire day throwing votes at each other. Time was running out, we had no clue who was who, and in fact suspected Mop It Up was the Godfather despite her search coming up Townie.  After scrambling a tie, Mop & Insano suggested to hit Stevey instead. Genius move on their part. Dark Samus did us a real solid by taking out TheFleece, because it confirmed Fleece was playing me, cleared Mop It Up's identity, and ensured future Detective results were reliable.

I knew if there was ties going on over the past few days I could essentually have two kills a night. One from a random tie breaker kill and then one from my hit.

My hope was ties would keep the Mafia in the dark longer on who would be going out, so they'd have to consider more targets. Didn't consider how it would benefit (Dark) Samus.

And like RAB said. Why would the mafia choose to investigate vs. Not making a hit? The only reason I can see is to feign inactivity, but since there was an alternative to not making a hit, it did not come across as inactivity. Definitely a bad move there.

My assumption was they had scouted twice, and would try to start a Townie Alliance on Day 2 or 3. Position one Goon as the Detective, say you spent the first days investigating Thatguy/Pokepal/BShy and dole out your other info on Day 4-5. That's why I didn't believe MASB was our detective - his previous searches had been  already dead people like eJamer and BShy. Easy to make claims about dead roles.

Shoutouts:
@Lucario for swinging things around for the Townies. Feels right for him and MASB to go all the way.
@GK for playing a convincing Townie! We mostly skipped you because RABicle pointed out you voted on Mr. Bungle; would've been a bad move for Mafia. We didn't really consider you could've been Samus. Serves us right for underestimating a new player. Hope you'll join again?
@Luigi Dude, sorry we never reached out as Townies. Hope the game was still fun for you and you didn't feel too abandoned. Judging from another thread you had more pressing matters at hand, hope those work out for you.
@Khush, brilliant game, well handled, and I like how you made the Federation the bad guys. Kind of a bummer the Samus roles didn't grab that many power ups maybe? I also think my role was maybe a bit too powerful; maybe it'd work better if you could only save up Vote Changes on Days you're not altering votes?

Thanks for playing everyone, this was a great distraction given the current circumstances.

[nickmitch]

I also want to give Khushrenada a shoutout because I know how complex this game can get to host and while I did have a million questions Khushrenada did answer them fairly well so as to not give too much away. 

Same. I knew my questions might've aroused suspicions, but I don't think anyone would ask question about their role in the day thread.

[M.K.Ultra]

Day 1 - I Bungled it up again and did not get my recon request in. I have excuses but will spare you and take the blame
Day 2 - We were looking for Mother Brain or Kraid and ruled out Mopitup and ShyGuy
Rabicle asked why we didn't just put out hits. I think it is because you can investigate twice as many people. Since I messed up the first recon it would have probably been better to just assassinate random townies.
Day 3 - We are ready to just take aim at the remaining townies. TheFleece wanted to take out Steef as they had been suspicous. I thought ejamer was too much of a leader and getting too close to identifying us so I swayed them to take out ejamer instead. Bungled again 
Day 4 - Things were looking good for the mafia but we vastly underestimated Kraid who we finally learned was Steef but by day 5 it was too late. Steef asked about this. I put out a hit on Kraid as soon as the identity was confirmed but it was the same night I was taken out.

Overall my strategy was to act like a townie (obviously). This is tough as I strive to be honest in real life. I really felt bad for lying to Rabicle. I think I prefer to be a townie in these games. Anyway, I thought that if I was a townie I would do whatever I could to support Kraid and the vote tying so that is what I did. I don't know how suspicious it was but I think by day 5 the townie alliance was just too strong. The only person that actually reached out to me individually was Rabicle. Thanks for sticking up for me Rab! Hopefully next time we are on the same side.

My hats off to Steef. Easily the MVP not only for use of the Kraid role but for the computer language role playing. I really enjoyed reading your posts.

Thanks to Khush for all their work and gg all around 

[BeautifulShy]

I am geninuely curious if anybody used my notes after I died?

[TheFleece]

Just want to thank everyone for a good game. I was asked by Khush to join and it wasn’t clear to me that the sign up date had passed. I thought I would be a regular townie, but picture me waking up surprised to find out I’m The Deleter. My home life has been a mess so trying to understand my role was tough, but I tried my best. Sorry to everyone if I messed up your vote or was late on some messages. Unfortunately I realized I’ve got too much of a heart and began wondering if I could execute precise hits to ensure no one had to die needlessly, but that didn’t work and the only hit we put out bore fruitless results. I think I played too soft though and might consider a different strategy for the future.

[ejamer]

I am geninuely curious if anybody used my notes after I died?

I looked at them... but didn't do much of anything after you died.

[Mop it up]

Whew, way too close for comfort! No way we would've won without Pokepal and BShy outing themselves, or GK taking out TheFleece.

Don't sell yourself short, you did well!

Overall my strategy was to act like a townie (obviously). This is tough as I strive to be honest in real life. I really felt bad for lying to Rabicle. I think I prefer to be a townie in these games.

I'm feeling generous so I'll give you a tip: one of the ways to act like a townie is to be consistent with your behavior from past games where you actually were. As an example, in this game you didn't put out a vote during day 1 or 2, which is unusual based on how you played the previous games, and this is part of the reason I suspected you as Mafia.

I am geninuely curious if anybody used my notes after I died?

I may or may not have...

[Luigi Dude]

I should clear this up, the reason I voted for myself wasn't because I wanted to leave the game, it was because I figured I was about to be voted out anyway so it was a curve ball to hopefully make everyone wonder why I would be doing that.

My name had been mentioned since Day 2 and on Day 4 I was the 3rd most voted on that day.  On Day 5, Mop it up and Lucario were already voting for me early on so I figured there was a good chance a bandwagon against me could form.  Of course even if I wasn't voted out, Dark Samus had the ability to hit two people that night, and the mafia had a hit as well, so I figured there was a good chance I was getting eliminated that day either way.

So basically I decided to just get in there early and vote for myself, that way the other townies might question jumping on a bandwagon with someone who's trying to eliminate themselves.  And this way, Dark Samus or the mafia wont hit me since they might be hoping to set me up by making the townies think I'm doing a double bluff.  Or they might think I'm one of the important roles trying to trick others, so they'd waste a hit on me thinking they got Mother Brain or Kraid, but then finding out it was actually just a regular townie so the others would have been saved.

The reason I didn't post after that is because nobody was mentioning my name during the day so I figured I'd lay low and if someone did vote for me I would have just shown up to vote for myself again to maybe cause more confusion.  Of course the irony is I almost made it to the very end, and I wasn't eliminated by the vote, the mafia or Dark Samus so my plan kind of worked.  It was the Omega Pirate that got me, which is a role I completely forgot about since there was no Town Vigilante in the last game I played so I didn't even think about that.

It's always the thing you least expect that gets you.

[RABicle]

I really felt bad for lying to Rabicle. I think I prefer to be a townie in these games. Anyway, I thought that if I was a townie I would do whatever I could to support Kraid and the vote tying so that is what I did. I don't know how suspicious it was but I think by day 5 the townie alliance was just too strong. The only person that actually reached out to me individually was Rabicle. Thanks for sticking up for me Rab! Hopefully next time we are on the same side.

Haha, it's all in the game. I was jsut drawn to the idea of a workers union for space pirates. What a novel concept, to organise pirates. Also that you were jsut blatently rocking a Space Pirate sprite like me. Your mirroring of me on Day 4 was pretty good because Lucario was convinced I was mafia and begging the otehr townies to eliminate me but eventually they investigated me.