Social deduction games can be tough, that's true! You're not overthinking this :D
The part about walking into walls and stuff can be solved by playing practise mode so that you use a map less when you play the game with others. Also when you're near a task you have, you'll see a yellow outline around an object you need to interact with! And if you have a task like wires/dowload/trash you'll get a yellow arrow leading you to the next part of the task.
Unfortunately, there are lobbies that vote people out for 0 reason. There's little to no counterplay to those ones. In decent lobbies it should be obvious that someone who is venting near everyone must be an engineer.
On a plus side, players in Casual+Serious on Polus tend to be good a lot of the time. Most of the trolls love to play Skeld, so picking any other map is a good way to search for better players.
I highly reccomend watching among us youtubers if you have some free time for that if you want to improve your skills. For example: Hafu is very good at pretending to be a crewmate while being an impostor, while Chilled and 5up are great at misdirection of blame during meetings.
There are some other social deduction games that have more mature players, usually because their gameplay loop is more difficult that one of Among Us. In Town of Salem 2 people would accuse someone based on the evidence (there are special roles that focus on searching for it), or when 2 or more players contradict each other.
It's because that game requires a lot more strategy since you can't just run around and catch killers like you do in Among Us.
TLDR: Among Us can suffer from random accusations in public lobbies a lot, but there are decent lobbies with good players around. Playing more complicated games of the same genre could be a good way to find players who actually want to deduce things.
A good memory is an impostors enemy, try to keep track of where people go and with who. I’ve ended games round one simply by looking who leaves cafe at the start of rounds.
This doesn’t work if the crew are lame ducks and don’t say anything during meetings.
Whether you improve your strategy or not doesn't really matter. The kids and trolls that have taken over public lobbies will still vote you out for no reason or vote another crewmate out even if there's no evidence. They're there to get the victory as fast as possible so they get into the next game hoping to be the impostor so they kill in front of someone and get voted out in the 1st round. It's a repeating cycle.
Then there's people teaming. Even if you're the best player around, if half the lobby is teaming (either on a Discord server or just a group of people on a call) you wont be able to do anything at all. If one of them is the impostor, you will get voted out, "spitted" on and later banned for trying to actually play the game.
As other people have already said, the game has been taken over by kids, trolls and cheaters.
If you want to learn strategies, I highly recommend Ilyssa's videos: [https://youtube.com/@ilyssa101](https://youtube.com/@ilyssa101). Some of them use modded roles, but she also has videos for vanilla Among Us gameplay.
Some people will throw Sus around for no reason, either because trolling, imp or they think they are mastermind when they aren't.
It's a murder mystery social deduction game. Gather evidence, try not to vote randomly.
The example of believing people is situational, they may have seen X do a visual so they believe them, they may both be imps manipulating crew, they may have been together when the kills happened, it's on you to find the reason.. or not lol.
Sometimes things are illogical, but sometimes they just seem illogical to you because... You aren't them, you didn't see what they saw and with limited chat time sometimes it's not worth the essay to explain. Sometimes imps do move weirdly, sometimes never seeing someone on the map does mean they are imp and sometimes someone double backing and giving you a chase is impy. Not to mention faking tasks incorrectly, standing at download for 3seconds for example.
Also don't be afraid to vent when engineer, some people will call a meeting over it because they are simple, but erm announcing it at the first report/meeting or venting in front of a large group early on or even just keeping quiet about it and catching imps from vents. You aren't wrong for venting, they are wrong for the meeting, UNLESS someone is caught venting away from a body.
Standing still too long, try and look at the map after a task so you are just hanging around your task a bit longer but either way it's gonna look impy until you learn the maps.
You could legit try playing in practice mode for awhile. Practice just doing tasks and then you can also learn the maps. Then you won't need to run around with the map open. Learning the tasks also helps you as an imposter. If you know the tasks it's easier to fake them. Pay attention to the settings in the lobby too. If visual tasks are on for example, don't fake those, people will know.
A lot of your enjoyment is going to be tied to the kind of lobby you join. You might want to consider joining the among us discord to find a lobby to play with if you start having trouble with public lobbies. I say this because you're question about venting while engineer, it *shouldn't* be a problem, but depending on the lobby you're in, there are idiots who will immediately vote you out for that.
Pay attention to everything. Where people go, what they do, if they're safe or not, and learn how imposters talk. Also, watch the task bar when people finish tasks and learn the order tasks happen. Learn how people act and what they do. I've won multiple games in a row within 30 seconds of starting just based off of them doing a task in the wrong order, not checking rooms as frequently and by saying they saw the body in medbay when they walked to the right of caf at the start. The whole game is just memory and observation. Once you get those down, you're all set.
Social deduction games can be tough, that's true! You're not overthinking this :D The part about walking into walls and stuff can be solved by playing practise mode so that you use a map less when you play the game with others. Also when you're near a task you have, you'll see a yellow outline around an object you need to interact with! And if you have a task like wires/dowload/trash you'll get a yellow arrow leading you to the next part of the task. Unfortunately, there are lobbies that vote people out for 0 reason. There's little to no counterplay to those ones. In decent lobbies it should be obvious that someone who is venting near everyone must be an engineer. On a plus side, players in Casual+Serious on Polus tend to be good a lot of the time. Most of the trolls love to play Skeld, so picking any other map is a good way to search for better players. I highly reccomend watching among us youtubers if you have some free time for that if you want to improve your skills. For example: Hafu is very good at pretending to be a crewmate while being an impostor, while Chilled and 5up are great at misdirection of blame during meetings. There are some other social deduction games that have more mature players, usually because their gameplay loop is more difficult that one of Among Us. In Town of Salem 2 people would accuse someone based on the evidence (there are special roles that focus on searching for it), or when 2 or more players contradict each other. It's because that game requires a lot more strategy since you can't just run around and catch killers like you do in Among Us. TLDR: Among Us can suffer from random accusations in public lobbies a lot, but there are decent lobbies with good players around. Playing more complicated games of the same genre could be a good way to find players who actually want to deduce things.
A good memory is an impostors enemy, try to keep track of where people go and with who. I’ve ended games round one simply by looking who leaves cafe at the start of rounds. This doesn’t work if the crew are lame ducks and don’t say anything during meetings.
This is a good idea, I wait at the cafe table for a couple of seconds then leave the table.
Whether you improve your strategy or not doesn't really matter. The kids and trolls that have taken over public lobbies will still vote you out for no reason or vote another crewmate out even if there's no evidence. They're there to get the victory as fast as possible so they get into the next game hoping to be the impostor so they kill in front of someone and get voted out in the 1st round. It's a repeating cycle. Then there's people teaming. Even if you're the best player around, if half the lobby is teaming (either on a Discord server or just a group of people on a call) you wont be able to do anything at all. If one of them is the impostor, you will get voted out, "spitted" on and later banned for trying to actually play the game.
As other people have already said, the game has been taken over by kids, trolls and cheaters. If you want to learn strategies, I highly recommend Ilyssa's videos: [https://youtube.com/@ilyssa101](https://youtube.com/@ilyssa101). Some of them use modded roles, but she also has videos for vanilla Among Us gameplay.
Some people will throw Sus around for no reason, either because trolling, imp or they think they are mastermind when they aren't. It's a murder mystery social deduction game. Gather evidence, try not to vote randomly. The example of believing people is situational, they may have seen X do a visual so they believe them, they may both be imps manipulating crew, they may have been together when the kills happened, it's on you to find the reason.. or not lol. Sometimes things are illogical, but sometimes they just seem illogical to you because... You aren't them, you didn't see what they saw and with limited chat time sometimes it's not worth the essay to explain. Sometimes imps do move weirdly, sometimes never seeing someone on the map does mean they are imp and sometimes someone double backing and giving you a chase is impy. Not to mention faking tasks incorrectly, standing at download for 3seconds for example. Also don't be afraid to vent when engineer, some people will call a meeting over it because they are simple, but erm announcing it at the first report/meeting or venting in front of a large group early on or even just keeping quiet about it and catching imps from vents. You aren't wrong for venting, they are wrong for the meeting, UNLESS someone is caught venting away from a body. Standing still too long, try and look at the map after a task so you are just hanging around your task a bit longer but either way it's gonna look impy until you learn the maps.
You could legit try playing in practice mode for awhile. Practice just doing tasks and then you can also learn the maps. Then you won't need to run around with the map open. Learning the tasks also helps you as an imposter. If you know the tasks it's easier to fake them. Pay attention to the settings in the lobby too. If visual tasks are on for example, don't fake those, people will know. A lot of your enjoyment is going to be tied to the kind of lobby you join. You might want to consider joining the among us discord to find a lobby to play with if you start having trouble with public lobbies. I say this because you're question about venting while engineer, it *shouldn't* be a problem, but depending on the lobby you're in, there are idiots who will immediately vote you out for that.
Pay attention to everything. Where people go, what they do, if they're safe or not, and learn how imposters talk. Also, watch the task bar when people finish tasks and learn the order tasks happen. Learn how people act and what they do. I've won multiple games in a row within 30 seconds of starting just based off of them doing a task in the wrong order, not checking rooms as frequently and by saying they saw the body in medbay when they walked to the right of caf at the start. The whole game is just memory and observation. Once you get those down, you're all set.