I hard claim VT
tbh the IDEAL is for nobody to ever claim ever and for the PRs to communicate results through a series of winks and nudges, but that never happens sooooo
The ideal for protectives is to not out at all. For cops, every villager should put out cop cover every day.
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Also I posted this on my AMA, and this is a very good overview on how I play FM.
I started playing Mafia on Town of Salem a couple of years ago.
Mostly I try to find out six things.
The first one is their mindset. What exactly are they showing themselves to be?
Villagers are uninformed and unaware of themselves meanwhile wolves are informed and aware. If a player does seem to know too much information regarding the game, they could be wolves, and if they are way too conscious on how they are perceived they could be wolves as well. Say, if a player says a bunch of controversial shit in a match then odds are that’s a villager. A wolf would carefully modulate and filter themselves in the match to prevent attention from being drawn to them. Usually wolves post to make themselves look good, not to scum hunt.
The second one is motivation. What is a player trying to accomplish?
For example, see how I found Simon and Mercenary right out of the gate in Auction Mafia. There was no reason why a villager should have asked those questions as it’d be a waste for them to buy scum-aligned abilities. Aside from this, remember that wolves have different goals in mind than villagers. A wolf will ultimately have their own survival for their goal, while a villager will have wolf hunting for theirs. See if a player prioritizes survival or hunting in a game and then you can easily deduce their alignment if his goals are clear.
The third one is by meta. How are they playing and is it similar to their wolf or village game?
Basically, compare their play styles in different games and see if their play style in your current game matches closer to their wolf or village play-style. This is effectively how I scum-read Hjasik in Short Fuse II and SFoL38.
The fourth one is via a night kill analysis. Why exactly did that one player die?
If the wolves kill a player, look back to their ISO to see if it can lead to any important information. Was the killed player repeatedly going after a certain player? If so then the certain player could be a wolf. Was the kill completely non-sensical and doesn’t really seem like a good night kill? Then odds are that an inexperienced player was behind it. This is pretty much how I solved 6d6 as the night-kill on Solic pretty much pointed out that the two remaining wolves were the players that were not paying any attention in the game, or how I found Baz in SFoL39 as the bleed on Astand was pretty much pointless and he’d only do it for his hatred of neutrals, which I don’t blame him as I dislike most nets.
The fifth one is by analyzing their progression. Does their progression feel natural or does it feel artificial?
Wolves knowing who their buddies are will have a more crafted and artificial progression when it comes to their reads. If a player makes a 360 for no reason at all regarding their views, odds are that they are a wolf trying to twist their own words to advance their own agenda. A town player will have a more clearer and natural progression in their point of view as they will slowly obtain more information rather than having it starting all out. This is how I outed Solic in All-Star.
Finally, check the votes. VCAs should be your bread and butter here and the more earnest a player is at when it comes to voting a player that flips wolf the more likely it is that they are village.
Additionally, use the PoE to your advantage. Clear as many players as possible by seeing them engage in villager-y behavior and then lynch the remainder. This is pretty much how I operate the best in Mafia.
As village, I usually pay attention to see if I notice any case of a player being too informed or too concerned with survival in their earlier posts. Usually this allows you to get the ball going. As wolf, I do the same thing except I try to find villagers doing scummy shit and try to power wolf via pushing mislynches.
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I’m also planning on writing a guide on how to correctly FPS and do reaction tests as the sheer amount of terrible self-destructive FPSes and pointless reaction testing needs to stop, really.
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I think a really good example of where a town missed a wonderful opportunity to use VCA was in Drakengard D2. VCA I think could’ve been used to make a very good case for you being scum there. You played very well by gladiating Magnus and effectively distracting the town from making all these associatives and other tools by being very in your face.
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What’s the general consensus on ‘softing’ roles?
I have always scumread people softing their roles early on, because I can’t see how it benefits town much but it hugely benefits scum who can then rely on a poor “look, I must be town, I softed my role ages ago” argument.
I do think there are definitely times when it’s good to soft or fake-soft, like maybe in a open game with very few town PR’s, or when you think you’ll need to prove you didn’t just make your role claim up out of thin air.
But on the whole it annoys me when people just randomly hint at their role. Either their scum setting up a later fake-claim or they are town who want to feel useful so smugly set up some long-winded soft to feel clever.
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Not saying I don’t like softing or I always scumread it, but if you soft you should have to have a good reason to later down the line - not just “I’m doing sneaky plays xDD”.
Also if you’re gonna soft make it a soft not a hard. No one likes a hard and it’ll get you in-front of a judge if you’re in the wrong place.
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It’s not really scummy here but it’s scummy other places. to be honest I don’t think the scum here are clever enough to do it
Overall there’s no reason to soft your role unless you have important information or something.