Secret-hitler: Personal/honour metas and their influence on competitive gameplay

[InvidiaSH]

Recently, the AEM team has been discussing the matter of personal metas that are always honoured by said player. In accordance with the Constitution of Policies a GitHub issue is made to discuss and have the first step of the implementation of any new ruling done.

The primary argument against personal metas is that it would 'ruin' the competitive nature of ranked because never doing X as X role gives you an individual edge to win irregardless of what team you are on, and thus gain more ELO. Other arguments also exist, but won't be mentioned now and can be discussed later.

In my function as Editor I also confirm the central idea of this suggested policy change to be possible.

In the foreseeable future, a vote will be run across the AEM team in accordance with the Constitution of Policies.

[InvidiaSH]

Suggested proposal by AEM member Number5

well, to bring this matter to a rest i'd like to give following final proposal as a rule:

1. You are allowed to pick your own strategies at own volition. However we expect you to give your best both as fas and as lib, however like gamethrowing, we will only prosecute in egregious cases or with admissions.
   This means you aren't allowed to intentionally disadvantage you when playing a certain team.

2. You are allowed to point out personally that you never make certain plays. You aren't allowed to use honour based promises or profile info to basically prove the party allegiance of a certain player, be it yourself or someone else. As secret hitler is a social deduction game based on manipulation, you backing yourself into a corner is contrary to the spirit of secret hitler, as it causes both you and your opposition not be able to manipulate the game.
   so that basically means: most things continue as they did. we only enforce something when it becomes a problem, and as we cannot stop long term metas, we try to reduce them to "we THINK x is y because of that play" instead of "now we KNOW x is y because of that play" in the minds of most players

[HREmperor]

We, Ferdinand, Emperor and King of the Romans, King of Bohemia and Hungary, etc.
are hereby agreeing to the above stated problem.

In fact there is a big connection to the recently shift in sh.ios player community, which can be with good reason be criticized; and those personal Metas, which werent a thing, half a year ago.
Overall im agreeing to Invidias statement, that something has to be done, believing, me not being the only one, advocating for it.

Although the biggest problem - at least in my opinion - lies in the practical implementation.
First of all- you have to draw somewhere a line, ofc a contextual dependent line, needless to say, one or two time errors shouldnt have bans or temp bans as consequence.
Besides - there are "loopholes", people always find them. Which doesnt mean, that the current idea is bad, just that it has to be watched and evaluated from time to time.

A good solution in my opinion would be a new report function/section, like "personal metas" or sth. more overall describing this kind of play.
Mods could see those reports and judge, at when point consequences should follow (f.e. Player A gets constant reports for "personal metaing", warnings, temp bans and as drastic action a perm ban would follow).

Overall i would suggest an open discussion about the matter, since its affecting whole sh.io community.
Maybe pin it on sh.ios general lobby chat and discord chat and let the discussion be open for 2 weeks.

Yours sincerly,

Ferdinand "Destroyer of the Cumans" Habsburg

[cozuya]

I don't understand a word of this 😑

[andy013]

How do these personal metas give you an advantage? Can you give an example?

If I say that I will never conflict turn 1 as a fascist, then maybe you know I'm liberal if I'm in a turn one conflict but it also reduces my options when I'm a fascist. It would be really tempting to break my rule every now and again because it could win me the game if you believe I'm liberal. It seems like just another form of lying which is part of the game. It's up to you if you want to believe me or not.

[D-matz]

Because if you play with the same people over and over again those rules get stronger than the normal claiming/lying that goes on within a single game

[Risenforce55]

As I believe this discussion was triggered by Number5 raising the complaint about personal metas, I will detail the game that he saw that led him to said complaint. I still have the replay: (I'm well aware of this being a discussion over a long time, but Number5 specifically complained to PapaDuck after the game so I assume this has relevance.)
https://secrethitler.io/game/#/replay/NervousDelightfulBoarRemake

But in summary, I remembered PapaDuck's meta on his bio, that said he never conflicts in seat 5 in turn 1. That happened, so I called it out and said 1 was outed, 5 was conf lib. He was using his alt MamaDuck , who's bio was pretty much empty, but since he invoked his main metas on me last game to call me confirmed fasc, I assumed the same applied.

As it turned out, 1 was the hitler who conflicted his own fascist, so on a technicality he never broke his meta. He invested 7, his 3rd fasc as lib, and because of another one of his main metas that he never invests a lib as truly lib in the fasc role, I called out 7 as "conf lib". There was literally no way fasc would have won otherwise, as their hitler would have been shot as "conf fasc".

I made the mistake of forcing the rest of the game to listen to Papa's metas, not knowing the technicality, and therefore lost the game. I take full responsibility, nor do I want anything changed as a result, but for me it highlights a couple of things.

A) It is nigh impossible to make sure all players in a game know all the personal metas, and even if those metas are written down people will still refuse to believe them.
B) Particularly with conflict metas, the technicality of fasc-fasc conf makes the meta moot and misleading, and there is no way to determine who "started" the conflict until after the game. Whatever is done about this is not my call, but it has to be said.
C) Trapping players into personal metas that can be believed only by reputation will deter new players, and those who don't want to follow those metas will blacklist those who accept/use them, which is detrimental to a (relatively, I know, its SH) friendly environment. As one person pointed out, reputation is an interesting factor that is more power than the regular conflicts/fake claims that happen each day, and therefore personal metas will have a different effect on each game, depending on the players, and make it hard for mods to judge what is acceptable and what is not.

Ultimately, even if you reword your meta to say "we THINK x is true because of y" does not stop other players from playing as if it ALWAYS is true, or it NEVER should be thought of as true, which changes the whole dynamic of the game from "outwit each other" to "do i know what this person does"? To some extent this is always true, but having to learn the personal meta of every person you meet may be too much effort for the casual players if personal metas are popularized.

I hope all of this is taken into consideration.

[InvidiaSH]

Just putting it out there as a point of order: This issue wasn't raised just by _one_ concern, but by a sum of concerns.

[SHWASNOT]

I agree that all of this stuff should be against the rules since any player who doesn't use them is at a significant disadvantage. Basically its a free elo boost for every player who uses them. Most of the time we are lib, so giving yourself an advantage as lib for a fas disadvantage will net you positive elo. Who wants to climb in a system that is decided by who has the most advantageous personal metas?

Personal metas reduce the complexity and skill of secret hitler. If someone never confs in seat 5 and they get conf'd, they basically won the game except in the odd case its fas fas. No fun, no skill, just elo boost. Obviously lots of players just dont conf there or conf very rarely as their strategy and claim "i never x" but that's not the same as having an honour system where there is no doubt and certain parts of the game tree can be completely eliminated. When a later event suggests that 5 could be fas, fas cannot make up stories, libs don't have to worry and think (or they only have to worry about the fas fas scenario).

I think its fine to even let players develop trust for other player's claimed metas but the bio metas need to go. Its still a big elo boost to have widespread trust in your metas that lower your fas winrate.

[EpicPigeon]

I mean this is clearly along the same lines as a pinky promise meta in which one player can basically single handedly win the game by being conflicted and removes the deduction portion of this social deduction game, banning people implementing personal metas seems that it would lead to a healthier game state and overall improvement in the gameplay

[InvidiaSH]

The vote in the AEM team is now up. AEM will be able to vote using the poll in the pins of the private channel.

[lordfrezon]

1 is fine. Even though I believe there is an empirically correct way to play the game as liberal, I acknowledge others might not agree. Codifying this should reduce the amount of reports for "gamethrowing" which were simply bad strategy.

2 is, to put it frankly, dogshit. The concept itself is bad and the execution is worse. To make it clear, what you're effectively saying is "you can't say in chat that you KNOW someone is such and such role, you have to say you THINK they're such and such role if you're using data from a personal meta".

Lets break this down, shall we?
"You are allowed to point out personally that you never make certain plays."
Ok fine, nothing wrong yet. People can believe you or not. People with personal metas obviously have an edge here but not an insurmountable one as their play patterns are predictable and thus exploitable

"You aren't allowed to use honour based promises or profile info to basically prove the party allegiance of a certain player, be it yourself or someone else."
Annnnd we're off the deep end already. The concept of some info being "taboo" is moronic. Ignoring for a second what this is intended to combat, what if I post in my profile every possible play i can make in every situation? According to this rule, no one can use any of my play information against me. Even if you're looking at the rule in the spirit it was designed, the best way to correct this issue is just make every game blind. That way no one can say "i'm so and so, I never conf". No one can believe that because there isn't a name associated with it.

"As secret hitler is a social deduction game based on manipulation, you backing yourself into a corner is contrary to the spirit of secret hitler, as it causes both you and your opposition not be able to manipulate the game."
To say that there is a "spirit" of the game is taking such a normative approach that it basically makes the game descend into "your fun vs my fun". Additionally, the second statement is just flat wrong. As mentioned above, people with personal metas that are known can be exploited and thus gamed. And if a personal meta isn't well known, its irrelevant and no one should be expected to believe it.

"so that basically means: most things continue as they did. we only enforce something when it becomes a problem, and as we cannot stop long term metas, we try to reduce them to "we THINK x is y because of that play" instead of "now we KNOW x is y because of that play" in the minds of most players"

aka we expect each of our players to be proficient in doublethink.

Rule 2 is inelegant and ineffectual at its intended goal. Blind games for all would solve this issue and many others. The entire thesis outline in these rules assumes a moral or at least authoritative high ground that is an insult to every player on the site.

[Lord-Zuko]

I think the personal metas are good, but use at own risk. Some people _cough_ sale _cough_ may change them in order to win a single game _cough_ sale _cough_.

[Risenforce55]

If only like a couple of people practice personal metas, I don't see too much of an issue as they can be learned and applied. But already with the attention this discussion is bringing among other things, more and more people are using them, like "if I'm seat 4 I never conf", you catch my drift. There's no way to enforce effectively what is an acceptable pet meta, and what is not. In the end, I worry about the day where every game someone invokes their own personal meta, and someone always throws because they don't know about it.

[andy013]

If more people use personal metas then it will just get to the point where they become totally meaningless and no one believes them. I think it's totally fine. IRL if you play with your friends, you learn how they play and get good at figuring out what role they are. It's no different online. You can't stop people from playing a certain way or saying that they don't conflict in a certain seat.

[TPWStar]

The problem of personal metas is that they are only good as long as you adhere to them completely, which is useless. A good example of this is not playing red on choice as fascist if it gives investigation powers to a liberal. In a large majority of your games, it makes sense to follow this rule (of thumb), but there are always times when it makes sense to break it (one instance that even the most ardent adherent of this rule would have to break it is in the case where 4 blues have already been played, and to play blue rather than give a liberal inv would immediately lose you the game). Since there will always be situations like this, there is no true meta you can use 100% of the time, which defeats the purpose of the guarantee.

On the other hand, the entire point of the game is to convince the other players that you are trustworthy by any means necessary. In that sense, I feel that simply _saying_ things like "I would never conf in seat 5" or "I would never claim 3 blues" is not the same as _enforcing_ these things onto other players (i.e. I would never do this and thus if you do not special elect me I will quit this game and blacklist you). At the end of the day, the players that do the best job selling themselves as liberal deserve victory, no matter what means they use to achieve this. And it's up to new players to learn the nuances of other's playstyle and habits, and also the statistical probabilities at play (which are fairly intuitive).

tl;dr Honestly I don't think this policy has any real purpose as when a player has stepped over a previously set boundary (i.e. they are spamming or being toxic), that is when it is most applicable.

[ghost]

The whole game is premised in lying... The metas I think should next be discussed are the ones that have increasingly become more game controlling to where remakes and rage quits are some how acceptable if 1 picks the wrong chancellor. The game is designed to allow a president to pick any chancellor yet the base majority locks it to numbers by layout. So new players don't Learn a game but rather metas. The honor metas I have not seen and seem to make no sense. I never to listen that it's like someone saying they are always lib in a game it's simply not true or if it is their actions will confirm said claims or deny them. People simply need to not be so trusting in a lying based game and if they do they should only blame themselves for getting tricked. Game controlling metas should be the focus here to better welcome new players to the community and so that we can all play the game not the meta.. thx for hearing me out. Glad this has been brought up for those who do suffer from this type of meta. Hopefully this discussion will expand to other metas that are excluding new peeps.

[cozuya]

I don't understand a word of this 😑

[HREmperor]

Seriously Vader we should stop with the glue sniffing.

[Lord-Zuko]

Ferdinand "Destroyer of the Cumans" Habsburg

he may be glue sniffing but you're glue huffing

[rilokiley]

what lord vader said, 100%.

i use personal metas with some of my alts. it's fun for me and no harm to anyone. i've never rage quit a game.

here's my suggestion for the rules: don't be a dick about your personal meta, or about any other meta.
also, be a good winner and a good loser, and focus on how you can improve next time rather than what idiot dumb dumb lib/fasc teammates you had that rekt ur elo.

[Bilal-A]

Hello It's your one and only SH Sheep
Personal metas can only be considered fair on a table where everyone knows everyone's play style. if this isnt the case then a lot of troubles come along with elo loss. For example in a game where 37 was the gov, a conf on inv happened. a lot of people knowing 7 (as he/she is somehow popular on this site) instantly outed 3 who obviously doesnt know who 7 is. This isnt horrible yet, but whats horrible is that they confirm that 7 is lib and even SE them. Now poor 3 sits there knowing he fucked up, when he actually hasnt, he was playing the right play. their case could be where 37 is fas fas and libs just lose. or it could be that if the person on 3 knows that 7 doesnt conf on inv, so he is forced there to play blue, instead of conflicting any one else that would have been on seat 7, which is a free blue for libs... unfair i'd say it overall.
Sincerely,
SH.Sheep

[ghost]

To be honest I could write an essay on why even attempting to remove metas is pointless, much less the matter of whether they are good for the game or not. This discussion is honestly silly; anyone saying otherwise does not know what they are talking about. If anyone wants to attempt to convince me otherwise feel free.

[Sale2016]

i dont see how personal metas are an issue, like it isnt only one sided, the player who is using the meta is in a risk of his meta being abused against himself and his team. For example i dont ever give inv, if i am fas and in gov with lib pres and its 3-1 for libs i will play the 4th blue. The point is the other team can abuse it aswell and you have to ask yourself does the meta benefit more than it hurts you. Its personal choice, as you can see that dumb jimdetector using his "i dont ever lie on claim...." meta is just being abused by everyone who he plays with they just pick him in gov cuz he doesnt lie (pretty sure hes a troll or some shit but nvm). And also when the player once breaks his meta anything he says is "i dont do that..." and etc is just pointless

[EpicPigeon]

I think that the problem is that say a player in seat 1 confs the player in seat 5 turn one, and bc player 5s personal metas say that they never conf in seat 5 turn 1 then 1 becomes outed fascist purely because 1 didnt spend ages looking at everyones personal metas. It stops 15 actually being a conflict and removes the deduction from the game

[Risenforce55]

@Sale2016 So if someone uses a personal meta, he puts himself at risk of being abused for using it. And if someone refuses to play a game with personal meta, he puts himself at risk of being abused for not playing it. And if someone outright falls trap to a personal meta due to lack of knowledge, he is at risk of blacklist and abuse. And if someone tries to explain another player's personal meta to the rest of the game, he risks abuse from people who don't want to play personal metas...

It's just chaos. I see no way we have the power to change the whole playerbase, so I see no effective way to keep allowing people to use personal metas by their own volition.

[ZephyrsCurse]

I think you could make an apples-to-apples comparison to playing with someone many times in a row. In doing so, you learn about the patterns and behaviors that particular player exhibits, and eventually you will be able to exploit the predictability and flaws in that player's style. The only difference is that putting your meta into the personal bio gives other players a chance to read it before playing (though how many would actually read it is a separate question.)

At first, I agreed wholeheartedly with @lordfrezon when he wrote that making the game blind nearly removes this entire issue (speech patterns and people yelling about their personal meta in chat notwithstanding), but after a bit of thought I feel that it slightly defeats the purpose of SH and social deduction games in general. You don't play a social deduction game in a dark room where no one can see you. You play with the full intention of learning how to play with specific players, learning their strengths and weakness, and finding someway to defeat them using that.

I think a better option would be just to remove bios, or to not allow personal/honor metas to be written into the bio. Every player has their own quirks (or metas), and we should let the players learn how to cope effectively with the different players on the site through the power of social deduction, rather than allowing them to read it on a profile.

tl;dr: Treat personal metas as a quirk of that player. It's a social deduction game, therefore players should learn through playing with others.

SIDE NOTE: I have seen an uptick in identification metas (I am making up the phrase) where players out themselves as libs in the first round because they did a very specific thing (types in all capital letters, etc.) This is the type of meta I would like to see treated as cheating.

SIDE SIDE NOTE: @Sale2016 I personally enjoy the Detector meta because he is a player on this website who is having fun, and you can clearly tell he is having fun with it. It is players who are in the upper echelons of the website who do it and get pissed is where I have the problem. I honestly can't tell if these people enjoy playing the game or not, because they just seem to get angry when their personal metas aren't listened to.

-Sayo

[Cayseron]

@Sale2016 problem is that this is not a single player game. So if you decide to handicap yourself as fas who is tricked into playing 4th blue cause you refuse to give invest is not just your handicap. You willingly put other players in handicap position for your own personal meta, thus you are potentially losing a game for your team to uphold your meta which is against rules. the rule i speak off specifically is "Play to win for the team you're dealt" which should imply "dont be selfish and play 4th blue when second red is more beneficial for your team and ruin the chances of your given team's victory for the sake of your personal meta"
Existence of personal meta are not completely wrong nor sure they be completely eradicated. They should be carefully supervised and kept under control.
decision to never conf in 1-5 gov turn 1 is fine but leaving the game if you get conflicted in 1-5 gov turn 1 and noone believes you, that is not fine, that is actually banable. This issue is here to help both mods and players to get to solution that will not completely forbid personal meta, but in the same time find a way where presence of this metas wont ruin the games for those who do not wish to be affected by them.
And sorry, but saying "if they dont like my meta they can just bl me and not play with me" is wrong, wont ever be the thing, and if personal meta thing become popular it will also be impossible to maintain.
So the idea is for personal metas to become a thing of coexistence not reason to divide

[AndrewTheBritishNump]

A deck of 10r2b and a liberal with less information as well as a trusted fascist with inv can be easily considered advantageous to fasc. As a liberal, I'd arguably want the inv there and have a shot to be able to find the last fascist, rather than having the 4th blue down... One can argue that it is never a legitimate strategy to do a certain thing and therefore, they don't do it. If I don't do something, why shouldn't I be able to reap the benefits the other way?

[ghost]

The mods who want to take away metas just don't know what they are taking about move on

[Risenforce55]

I should point out that the link to this Github issue in the SH announcements isn't working, so that should be fixed.

[HREmperor]

Also could you please dont call them personal METAs?
A M.e.t.a. is the most effective tactic avaible, so quite the contrary to the bio bs.

(Credit goes to cay, for explaining it to me twice, some months ago)

[samfuller01]

I think at this point personal meta's aren't really used. Papaduck is no longer with us and he was the main person that I thought of as using personal metas. This hasn't been commented on in a while either.

I think this can be closed