Talk:Mayor/@comment-31188881-20171224220558

Am I the only person in the entire fandom that thinks VFR (voting for roles) is a great strategy? (I'll exclude Neutral roles while writing this since it can create confusion.)

First of all, game's theme is informed minority vs uninformed majority. Town has a massive amount of membership but lacks reliable information and communication ways as a result. Meanwhile, Mafia is a small group but actually has critical informations of the game given to them before it even starts and has reliable ways for communication. In sum, Town has the advantage of majority while Mafia has the advantage of information.

They're pretty equal to begin with. They have different advantages and different ways to use them in order to cover up their disadvantages. The party who achieves the latter will win the game. Town's goal is to lynch evil-doers by using their majority and covering up their lack of information by exchanging leads during the discussion phrase. Mafia's goal is to kill anyone who's not Mafia by eliminating one person at night as they already know who their enemies are and gain the majority soon after.

I already explained why VFR is good above. Town MUST give away any information they have or gained in order to be able to win against Mafia. After all, lack of information is their disagvantage and they must repair it to be able to get the upper hand with their majority. If Town doesn't discuss properly and exchanges information, Mafia would kill one Townie every night and gain the majority soon after automatically. Hiding from Mafia is the least reliable strategy for Town in that sense either as they already know you're not on their side while Town desperately needs to know you're a trust-worthy teammate.

That's what VFR stands for! It forces all the Townies to share their eads day by day and it greatly repairs the "lack of information" issue they have since they know each others' roles. It also allows them to put their leads together and open even larger windows for deduction. For example, a Spy-Lookout combo can literally fuck up the Mafia but unless everyone shares their informations day by day, the two have no way of identifying each others and be useful. Being co-ordinated is the only way Town can win as it repairs their sole disadvantage of lacking information and I honestly can't understand how people are expecting a co-ordination while passively waiting for TIs to get lucky.

Another reason that VFR is despised is that it exposes important Town roles. Well, it's not that much of a big deal. Take the Jailor as an example! He's an easily provable Town role and is a high priority target for evils. Most players say that exposing yourself as the Jailor is a suicide when in fact, it's not that risky to reveal in a crowded group. There will always be TPs or indirect methods like LOs to protect you, it will also help a Retri to decide when to use their ability. Besides, as I said before, Mafia already knows that Jailor isn't on their side and can easily eliminate him by random shooting even if they don't know his identity. Thus, it's a better idea to come up with a legiminate plan in public to keep him safe instead of waiting for him to get killed by default.

There are also the negative effects on the evils. First, it forced them to do claims that can be CC'd or disproved by another role (most likely LOs). We've no way of doing that if they don't even make a claim till they finaly gain the majority. I've seen that happening a lot solely because Town was passive since they thought that's how an evidence-based game must be played and none of the TIs happened to be lucky enough to check said evils. Second, the evils probably won't be prepared for a role claim and they'd easily mess this up. If you're good at reading people, you can realize how nervous they were while claiming or how they answered pretty late. After all, a Townie must be able to quickly share what he has without being afraid of his lies to be found out unlike a lying evil. This panic can also cause them to do shitty claims while trying to be quick and confident such as SK claiming Doctor after making his existence obvious by killing people. Third, it creates Voting Records! Mafias never vote up their fellow friends unless they're experimented players, NK roles also tend to push for as many lycnhes as possible since it decreases the amount of players they should eliminate. You can take a look at those records back when a Mafia dies to see who did/didn't vote him up, for example.

I'm tired already so let's cut it short! VFR is a great strategy and I honestly hate it when people just denigrate it without trying to understand how efficent it is. Besides, one more thing... Playing a game of VFR, no matter if you support it or not, under no circumtances, never and never gives you the right to kill your REVEALED Mayor! It's gamethrowing and it only shows that you're a bunch of immature whiny brats who'll go against the guidelines just because someoen disagreed with them. It also includes not claiming on the stand. Don't say that you "bravely" stood up against a shit strategy after gamethrowing, you really aren't and you're actually making the community more toxic than intentional gamethrowers do as they at least know they're in the wrong.