4Game

There are many 9000+IQ guides for impostors, but can we just discuss, how to not ruin the game as a crewmate? Common things i've seen so far are:

— "Throwing" vote early.
nuff said

— Skipping on critical rounds.
same as above

— Voting on 10/9/8/7.
While there might be a good reason to do so, such as when multiple (preferably more than two) people have a clear suspect, due to previously mentioned "throwing issue" votes might be cast on incomplete, false or malicious information. This alone is bad, but it gets worse if confirms are on, causing entire team to spiral into the abyss, should a crewmate throw wrongful sus at another crewmate

— Paranoing about somebody chasing you.
It might be true, but to throw a sus like that one should at the very least establish that either:

a) one is proven 'safe' player, who might be targeted for a kill;

b) one saw somebody venting or faking a task

In any case, throwing this sus at first round should be discouraged, and, on top of that, kill cooldown should be taken into account — i, for example, was once voted out for following another player for the entire round with kill cooldown of mere 10 seconds.
Moreover there are totally valid reasons for a crewmate to follow you: personal safety, establishing alibi, suspecting you or simply checking you doing tasks and so on

— Having low awareness of server settings.
Crewmate at the very least should be aware of kill cooldown, visual tasks and confirm ejects settings. This will

a) Reveal potential selfs due to very early murder reports with "no sus"

b) Save crewmates from false faking reports

c) Give advance knowledge of whether opposite accusation can be resolved by voting both players out (they still can)

— Having low awareness of game situation in general.
Seeing and knowing who was with who really helps, so if your attention span and short-term memory aren't very sharp, or you simply may confuse colors (was it cyan or lime?), consider this protip: instead of trying to memorize who did what, devise a code letter for every crewmate color and have a piece of paper with you where you will very briefly write what colors you've seen at what stage of the round, just as a mnemonic guide for future questioning. It helped me tremendously on many occasions. Also make records of who says what as well.

— False reporting venting.
That is a big one, especially when imp confirms are on (voting out spiral strikes again). Here are things commonly reported as venting:

a) Staying on a vent doing a task (such as download in electric at Skeld);

b) Glitching. Whenever i get a random report of me 'venting' i assume i just glitched out and even ask other players not to vote out a crewmate who reported me on the next round. Imps, from my experience, never falsely report venting, esp. on early rounds, due to associated risks, but regular crewmates do it all the time. One should be mindful, however, that this does not apply to critical rounds;

c) "Disappearing". Maybe someone did vent out, while you were doing task. Or maybe crewmate vision was too short for you to tell. Or maybe you simply weren't paying attention.

— False reporting murder.
If you see someone "just standing on the body", at least consider the entire situation in question:

a) Is it possible they were just doing task, being unaware of surroundings? Imp will never fake a task at the crime scene, as it is an easy way to get voted out, unless of course we're talking about some 9000 IQ metagaming, that among other things mandates usage of voice chat;

b) Is it possible that they just found the body exactly as you did and failed to report it one millisecond after the 'report' button has popped up? You know, spending entire round with safe buddy just to see them vote you out because you found the body they failed to see, and thus "literally killed him and self-reported" really sucks.

— Failing to grasp strategic voting.
True if confirm ejects are off. If on early round two players throwing hard accusations on each other — and by "hard" i mean they both attest literally seeing each other kill — crewmates usually will resolve it by voting both of them out sequentially. For some reason this behavior changes when they don't see "X was not an Impostor" message after the first vote, but it really shouldn't be. If you were sure enough to kick one player on 9 or 8 due to accusation alone, then simply throw another one out, no questions asked. This will turn potential 2v5 that you perceive as 1v6, into a guaranteed and statistically superior 1v5 team composition, assuming ofc that both of previous suspects are not safe crewmates throwing idiot ball at each other due to false report of murder described above.

— Failing to dismantle 2 v 2 v 1 gambit.
That's an interesting one i've seen happening 4 times already. If round ends at 3v2, two imps and two crewmates might form two teams, vouching for their buddies and casting suspicion at the fifth player, who reported the body but can't establish good alibi due to being alone. The problem is, fifth player in this situation more often than not is innocent, so one have to be extra wary of whether player in question was cleared or otherwise exonerated in previous rounds, and again, don't throw early.

That's the anti-patterns of crewmate behavior i've seen so far. Again, mainly related to public servers, which are a mixed bug, but some of them do happen in VC games as well. Discuss.