Trial by error is hardly an effective/efficient way to get better at anything, after all.
Actually, it is considered an effective way to get better at things. You don't get better at things by doing them perfectly immediately, but by making mistakes and learning from them. Now, if you're making mistakes but not recognising them, I have to question whether it's beneficial to have someone correct your mistakes immediately; For one, it's unfair to those who don't have a hydra. For two, if I were at work and someone'd correct me the entire day over everything I do wrong, I would probably find a new job.
A hydra is a comfort zone. To learn, you have to get out of that comfort zone. Unless you're otherwise helpless without hydra (Kitten4u's thing where sometimes her brain fries comes to mind), I'm not inclined to allow a hydra. If you want to learn from your game,
you can do so at the end of it. Moreover, there are no doubt courses on debating and psychology/manipulation, which are the two relevant skills to have to play Mafia competently. (Mind, manipulation isn't necessarily manipulation through pity parties.)
In any case, not playing due to not being confident you can play the game is fine. If you can't play, it's usually no fun.
Unrelated, but being condescending like that ("if you can't figure it out yourself then you shouldn't be playing this game") isn't a very nice thing to do.
That's not what he said. Pesco said that if you can't figure out whether you had a vote on Town or Scum EVEN AFTER ALL FLIPS ARE GIVEN, you shouldn't be playing, and he's right. If there's a publicly available list that says Dormio is Scum and you can't figure out you were voting Scum when you voted Dormio, you should not be playing Mafia.
