But on the flipside it can confuse things to try to mess with sincere reads. And I'm not good enough at 4D chess usually to temper my village read of someone just to try to keep them from getting NK'd. Like, if I'm hedging on someone I'm good at reading, let's say SAR, and then I die...that's a perfect opportunity for wolves to misyeet her because I never said the soul read had happened and she was village.
Yeah, I mean, it's fair this point you're making.
To be clear, I'm not making up sus, I just don't make a point of not leaning into the natural paranoia. Because I see value in the act of questioning, and PbPa, looking at a single post in isolation almost, or looking at a string of them looking for a scummy pattern (like I was doing with yours), it can catch the scum. But the utility AND weakness of the method, is that many individual posts taken in isolation, you can ask the question, would Wolf!So-and-So say this, and you can conclude sure, maybe. This is an organic way to find sus to sus.
The thing is, no one who is actually village and is in the "village core" is likely to be yeeted over a single post or a couple of equivocal ones, just because it *could* be wolfy, unless it's just really reads particularly badly. Yes there is the bias that saying someone's name and "wolf" enough will lead to yeets in some cases (there is a name for this bias I forget, it's one of those cognitive bias things proven by science).
In any case, you'd have to convince the village which we keep saying, for some players can really take a lot of convincing and just isn't going to happen. But wolves have to come at the game with a lot more, I don't know hope or optimism or something. They want to believe they can get the misyeets because they have to believe this, or they couldn't even begin to believe a wolf win is possible. Wolf hope springs eternal, because it must. So like someone desperate for a date, they may see signs someone might be pocketed or yeeted and overestimate their chances of this happening.
The people we are talking about as village leaders, the main issue is that I don't pretend to be very good at correctly wolf reading many of them. And many of them have pulled off epic wins that burn my soul. RvB, HZD, 10th Ann. I mean, some of these are old games, but the last one is recent. And genny recently got a wolf win. These game were won by some players that you have to really be top of game to keep from winning.
Now I have missed some games the last 6 months so I don't know how easily some of the village-core leader type people get to end game as wolves without being caught.
I think I said it last game, that it's crucial to be really sure about your village reads and who is being regarded as village leaders. Maybe this is why it feels like a clique - because if the issue is that you have a group that is village and can read each other village, and then you have the villagers who both may be skeptical of the reads or do not read those people as easily, and are themselves hard to read, then you basically have me as village banging my head against the wall trying to figure the other players out, and it does feel like players that dare to question them then get yeeted for not getting into the blocc or recognizing the blocc. See exhibit mkg. Didn't happen this game, but historically she has a hard time being recognized as village. I can't speak to how well she recognizes other players though. But I do see some players not recognizing some other players and paying the price over and over for it.
And to be fair, one doesn't have to exactly nerf one's village play. I know some players that adjusted by playing their cards *just* a little closer to the vest. Like, by maybe not giving strong wolf reads D1. You can argue the issue with lying low in this way would give wolves a pass, and what if you get killed early anyway then the accurate early reads die with you. But if you lay low you are less likely to be killed. And you collect more data points.
Say Zenge reads TN wolfy D1, and they are wolf. TN killing Zenge M1 may actually still work in their favor. They might get sus, but there are so many players, and the Z TN read would have been based on very little data at that point, so it just won't have the same weight as it might a little later into game. And say WZ strongly reads Z village. If Z and WZ hold off on giving these strong reads D1, they increase the likelihood the wolves don't feel so threatened by Z they feel they need to kill him N1.
Now, is this throwing the game or nerfing? I would argue not. Unless Z feels VERY strongly or thinks that voicing the sus is going to get TN yeeted D1, there might be less to gain by voicing the thoughts strongly on thread that early in. Waiting until D2 or D3 to throw much sus on your sus reads, could have the benefit of drawing the pack out more or you having more of a chance to interact and identify partners.
Unless you think you will be targeted N1 for whatever reason, or that there is NO sus or no one will come to see the TN sus as the game goes on, then speaking up at D1 might not have a ton of utility.
Same with strongly reading Z vill D1 by WZ. Unless people are questioning and sussing Z, the vill read by WZ D1 may not do much more that paint a target on his back.
This is another reason why I think it's totally fine to mention the people you are village reading, but if it's some of these players you may not want to put it in a single post in a list. Mention as you go, so people paying attention to thread can see it. Having a list of village reads in a single post, and many people doing that, WILL save a time crunched or behind on thread pack a ton of work at night killing off village consensus players.
I get how sussing and not voting people can make villagers look wolfier than they are. But we're talking about, how can we adapt play so that things go a little differently. The only way to do that is for things to be done a little different.
So, I don't actually have a better solution than for villagers to seriously talk about village leaders to give them cover, and to encourage wolves to try to misyeet these people instead. And if they are wolves, serious talk is helpful obvs.
If I'm village, I need to be convinced these people are village. And if I'm a wolf, I need to be able to try to push these people. Both activities have the potential to make the game more fun for everyone though, consider that.
I don't know what to do about this village core. I do see it as a problem because of how it affects wolf play and then people becoming default early night kill targets or early often misyeets.
We used to have more of a range of village play styles, like DocE, MJ, Nohiko, MsP, and who was that player that started with a K? They injected some chaos into the game. They made it a little harder for village because of the chaos.
I can think of other ways to adjust village play to try to survive longer, that might not backfire. It might work.
And consider, that these players that are so villagey and do so great being villagey, that you're saying they can't pull off wolf wins anymore - like, if you make your village play so textbook village, then you might really struggle when you're a wolf. There needs to be a balance. So maybe people need to stick their neck out and be a little more sketchy. Like seriously, if you don't lean into some sketch behavior (like flinging a little mud at your village reads to see how they react, AND if opportunistic wolves will react) then you have very little you can get away with as a wolf, and you will also have less chance of surviving early NK selection.
Is it nerfing play to be a little less aggressive to your early POE and being a little more, under the radar or sketch or whatever? Well, it depends on if your living past early game has enough benefit for your team. That could counter anything lost by being a little less aggressive or a little more sketch, perhaps.
I've given this a lot of thought when I first started playing, because once upon a time I had improved my village play enough to be hamstrung as a wolf and even to be NK early. But then you just lose every wolf game and you hardly play being killed. And so I guess it depends on how much you think you're needed to help village by being around.
It might seem like I'm huge dingus, but the whole thing going on has made me really adjust my play to the point that I don't even feel like I'm playing well to my wincon anymore. Honestly now I think I just play to punish other people or to try to move the site meta to reverse these annoying trends.
a bit of sus combined with my usual trash voting makes for an alive Dubz. I think I even mentioned that this game since you were the only person still bringing up reasons why I might be suspicious...let me see if I can find the post.
