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Post by Snaq ◢ ◤ on May 28, 2019 19:41:21 GMT
Ah, people love to soft nowadays. Or well, what they think softing is. They just love letting Mafia know their role without outright mentioning it to town so that it has no benefit to them. Oh, how I love this commonplace mechanic. Well... anyway. A lot of people seem to think that they have to "soft" to make it obvious to specific people what role they are, preferably town. However, you don't know if the people who pick up on it will be town, and what would town do with the soft? Townread you? This is basically just playing roulette between the players. I often see one of these three things. The first one is arguably not softing, but still annoying. 1) [10:17:45] SirCloud: if I say it i’m gonna die lol By saying that, scum knows you're something important anyway... just claim and get it over with at this point. At least town will be able to judge exactly what you are, and use any info you're able to give. This is just pointless. 2) [14:05:29] drop that volbeat: Im gonna sit on a baby This is so obvious that anyone seeing it knows your claim. You can just as well say you're a babysitter. 3) [14:08:37] LS's Ghost: thats my soft [14:08:49] LS's Ghost: om do you see it [14:09:05] LS's Ghost: ... [14:09:12] LS's Ghost: om look very closely [14:09:21] LS's Ghost: at the first 2 words of each line By doing this, you're pointing out a valid soft. If you point out a valid soft, it's basically just claiming. If anything, most townies won't care enough to look it up, but scum WILL want to know what role you are, so they will look it up to find out what you are. The idea behind a soft is that you can later use it as proof of you being that role. Not that anyone discovers it by themselves - but to look back on later and realise that you really did soft it when you need the proof. This way, you have proof that you didn't suddenly decide on a fakeclaim, but knew you were that game from the start. Scum is much less likely to do this, as well they would have to think of a good fakeclaim since the start of the game. Another use of softs is for roles like Cop, Roleblocker or Hider to soft who their targets were (or will be for Hider). The idea behind this is that people can't notice it well when you're alive, to avoid becoming a target, but after you die at night, they will be able to look back at what you said to scout if you said something that may point towards what they did. This is especially tough though, as it'd have to be something that people CAN find on their own, but normally would just glance over! What do you think of the way people soft? Do you agree with the examples and analysis that I gave or do you have another philosophy on it? I think this is a pretty interesting topic that could be improved on a lot
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Post by gimm1ck on May 28, 2019 19:47:22 GMT
I agree that softing outs power roles for scum.
People may say that softing results (Ex. oh, I feel that Schiavetto is townie now fsr, or (see this with gunsmiths all the time) "Heh Heh *winks* Moto you got my gift right" is just pointless and outs yourself; at this point you should officially have a hypo.
Agree with the analysis though.
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Post by Snaq ◢ ◤ on May 28, 2019 19:53:55 GMT
I agree that softing outs power roles for scum. People may say that softing results (Ex. oh, I feel that Schiavetto is townie now fsr, or (see this with gunsmiths all the time) "Heh Heh *winks* Moto you got my gift right" is just pointless and outs yourself; at this point you should officially have a hypo. Agree with the analysis though. Yeah, I do find it interesting what you raise with gunsmith, which is the one excusable thing where you want to aim it at one person. I feel like if you and another person have information that no one else has, you can attempt to make an effective "soft" to them, by saying that'd only be noticeable to them. You shouldn't do this if it's not game-related info though, or they may be scum (and even with Gunsmith, you have to be pretty damn sure you read that right). I'd not advice against it, but tough. A similar situation is a theme like Starcrossed, which wants you to try to soft your kill as Mafia to your partner, as you're not allowed to talk to them normally. This is especially risky as town should be on the look-out for it.
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Post by gimm1ck on May 28, 2019 19:58:27 GMT
I agree that softing outs power roles for scum. People may say that softing results (Ex. oh, I feel that Schiavetto is townie now fsr, or (see this with gunsmiths all the time) "Heh Heh *winks* Moto you got my gift right" is just pointless and outs yourself; at this point you should officially have a hypo. Agree with the analysis though. Yeah, I do find it interesting what you raise with gunsmith, which is the one excusable thing where you want to aim it at one person. I feel like if you and another person have information that no one else has, you can attempt to make an effective "soft" to them, by saying that'd only be noticeable to them. You shouldn't do this if it's not game-related info though, or they may be scum (and even with Gunsmith, you have to be pretty damn sure you read that right). I'd not advice against it, but tough. A similar situation is a theme like Starcrossed, which wants you to try to soft your kill as Mafia to your partner, as you're not allowed to talk to them normally. This is especially risky as town should be on the look-out for it. Usually it's not done this obviously, but scum paying attention will find it. For gunsmiths though, you don't even know if the person you gun is town. Imo softing should be only done in the form of confirmed townie to a person and should be done in the form of hard townreads, for things like Hiders/Weak roles. They should also soft their target, too, although for weak roles it can be slightly misleading at times.
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Post by VigilanteVigoroth on May 28, 2019 20:35:07 GMT
Similar to snaqs 3rd example, please for the love of god don’t go HEY GIMM1CK WAS THAT A SOFT? If it was a soft, you’ve just made it extremely obvious that it was a soft and now he may as well have claimed which is obviously not ideal because randomly claiming is usually not beneficial to town and I could make a whole separate thread about shouting claim If it wasn’t a soft, then it wasn’t a soft and you’ve just wasted everybodies time Softig is 1000x easier on server mafia where not every message is read in detail by every player Best way to soft is to make a message that is directed at another player that will allow them to have a good idea of what you are saying without letting others notice what you are saying FOR ExAMPLe Game of classic. Cop died early, but managed to clear Toni as town before dying. Toni XY: Doc on me pls Meower9Lives: CLAIM Gimm1ck: I’m russian lol DoomedDitto has shifted their lynch from Gimm1ck to Darnell VigilanteVigoroth: dw toni ur safe bb Darnell: lol Meower9Lives: CLAIM
That was me as doctor communicating to Toni that I was gonna doc him and that is doc. It’s probably a little bit too obvious when u see it like that but if u imagine the other messages and CLAIM’s were even more then it would probably slip under the radar to most people Did that make any sense? I hope so Also 10000% agree with gimmy and snaqqle on the things they’ve said
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Softing
May 28, 2019 20:36:43 GMT
via mobile
Post by VigilanteVigoroth on May 28, 2019 20:36:43 GMT
Also shoutout to when me and spiderz swept starcrossed At the end of each day just before deadline I would say a players name. Nothing else. Spiderz was a smart bean and killed that person. We did that every night and swept the game. Looking back I’m suprised town didn’t see it as it was fairly random. Although I may have lynched the person instead of saying their name randomly Idr
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Post by Schiavetto ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ on May 28, 2019 21:59:32 GMT
I spoke about this in Discord, but yeah breadcrumbing is the only form of softing i find consistently reliable - and even then, you have to change things up occasionally for it to stay effective. When it comes to softing, I find it really helpful to think about things from scum's perspective (since, as the OP mentions, the goal is to convey information to town without unnecessarily exposing yourself to scum. Here are some things I am typically on the look-out for when I'm PRhunting in the scumchat: - When a townie suddenly and unilaterally begins buddying another player, or is one-track-minded in their interactions with the PL
e.g. Spiderz is pretty general in his interactions D1, but D2 he spends a LOT of time talking to coinboy)
- Players who don't participate in a hypo (especially if the theme has any roleblockers), or who break formula during a call for hypos
e.g. VigVig: If I'm seer, I got Snaq as not wolf Neo: If I'm Seer then I targeted OM; got him as town commie: Gimm1ck's looking pretty townie to me right now
- Defensive lynching, either by securing plur elsewhere or by building a counterwagon on a zero-risk player (NB, this is also a scumtell)
- EOD hints (sudden lynches, hammers after a period of silence, last-minute comments directed at another player, etc.)
- Players telling a PR who to target without being prompted
e.g. The vast majority of a 15P town: *Day 1 shitposting* Meow: tbh JK should block Zeito tonight)
A lot of these things are done either deliberately or unconsciously when town PRs are trying to communicate their importance to the other players in the game. If your planning on softing and are doing any of the above, there's a decent chance scum has already sent kill on you.
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Post by gimm1ck on May 28, 2019 22:21:27 GMT
^also very important for scum hunting for pr tells
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Post by złerdzib on Jun 8, 2019 6:22:44 GMT
gonna go over this post with my own response in purple (because its a good color); none of this means any offense to snaq at all, just my opinion conflicts with his <abbr data-timestamp="1559072481000" title="May 28, 2019 15:41:21 GMT -4" class="o-timestamp time">May 28, 2019 15:41:21 GMT -4</abbr> Lucas ◢ ◤ said:Ah, people love to soft nowadays. Or well, what they think softing is. They just love letting Mafia know their role without outright mentioning it to town so that it has no benefit to them. Oh, how I love this commonplace mechanic. Well... anyway. A lot of people seem to think that they have to "soft" to make it obvious to specific people what role they are, preferably town. However, you don't know if the people who pick up on it will be town, and what would town do with the soft? Townread you? This is basically just playing roulette between the players. I often see one of these three things. The first one is arguably not softing, but still annoying. 1) [10:17:45] SirCloud: if I say it i’m gonna die lol By saying that, scum knows you're something important anyway... just claim and get it over with at this point. At least town will be able to judge exactly what you are, and use any info you're able to give. This is just pointless. This actually works the other way around. It can be used as a huge Jebait to pull a Mafia kill toward yourself, making a kill on a claim like this a double-edged sword. Perhaps a quadruple-edged sword, because you're also very likely to be killed by the town themselves without a proper claim, but it has a strategical use regardless.2) [14:05:29] drop that volbeat: Im gonna sit on a baby This is so obvious that anyone seeing it knows your claim. You can just as well say you're a babysitter. Okay, yeah, that's just ridiculous...3) [14:08:37] LS's Ghost: thats my soft [14:08:49] LS's Ghost: om do you see it [14:09:05] LS's Ghost: ... [14:09:12] LS's Ghost: om look very closely [14:09:21] LS's Ghost: at the first 2 words of each line By doing this, you're pointing out a valid soft. If you point out a valid soft, it's basically just claiming. If anything, most townies won't care enough to look it up, but scum WILL want to know what role you are, so they will look it up to find out what you are. I also have to tentatively agree with this one; however, going back to the first reply, there are valid reasons to pretend to soft while making it extremely obvious.The idea behind a soft is that you can later use it as proof of you being that role. Not that anyone discovers it by themselves - but to look back on later and realise that you really did soft it when you need the proof. This way, you have proof that you didn't suddenly decide on a fakeclaim, but knew you were that game from the start. Scum is much less likely to do this, as well they would have to think of a good fakeclaim since the start of the game. Nice analysis. Personally, I think softs can also sometimes work as in-the-moment hints, but I'd have to hard agree with this.Another use of softs is for roles like Cop, Roleblocker or Hider to soft who their targets were (or will be for Hider). The idea behind this is that people can't notice it well when you're alive, to avoid becoming a target, but after you die at night, they will be able to look back at what you said to scout if you said something that may point towards what they did. This is especially tough though, as it'd have to be something that people CAN find on their own, but normally would just glance over! What do you think of the way people soft? Do you agree with the examples and analysis that I gave or do you have another philosophy on it? I think this is a pretty interesting topic that could be improved on a lot Loving the thread. I think the issues you point out are kinda valid, and moreover, softing in itself has had its definition become diluted to the point where nearly hardclaiming could be named a soft.
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Post by chapterseven on Jun 11, 2019 19:54:10 GMT
personally i think most people just dont know how to soft right. The examples giving above, whether real or not, show someone who isnt trying to soft and is more so doing a last ditch effort to survive imo as all 3 of those examples are usually around when people would say those.
I also had a very similar experience to VigVig cept that I was cop in a classic game. pmuch all I did was at mid day or end day I'd say (lets use Zorquax for an example bc i dont remember the exact people) Zorquax is (random adjevtive) At night I'd inspect quax see the result and if town I'd say something like "Zorquax is rocking man" if mafia it would be something like Zorquax why aren't you rocking man?" and lynch them It's funny,and something you would expect me to do, and thats why it was so effective because it seems normal and thus mafia wouldn't care for it. it managed to work since what i wanted was to have my inspections out but not have to claim cop. Got half the game cleared before I died. For me personally the best softs play off of how you just normally play the game.
People try too hard to soft and it becomes obvious that they are either A) trying to soft or b) are a PR and that defeats the point. For me I'm known for saying random stuff while playing, like we could be talking about who mafia might be and ill come out of nowhere saying "Damn Darnell is thicc". so saying something like "ya man Zorquax is the most popping rocking person i know rn" isn't out of the ordinary for me but its still noticable enough that town could pick up on it after I die. You could make the arguement that if I have an inspection of mafia i should just claim cop and lynch but thats not the point I'm making, I'm saying a good soft shouldn't be obvious but should be noticable. Saying something like Zorquax is green is obvious however saying something like Zorquax is shackalackacracking isn't.
ofc roles like cop/doc have a pattern so its easier to notice them, but if i was playing a role like joat with a one time pl block on mafia and i wanted to soft id do something more on the lines of "Zorquax what you did was not supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Its big and thus noticable but not obvious im saying i blocked him because who the fuck says supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in a normal convo. Anyways idek if what I'm saying is right but thats what used to work for me back in ye olde days.
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