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The Bloop
Jul 5, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

xbilkis posted:

The F4 twist also posits that

1) Making fire is a more meaningful way of "earning" your way into the F3 than positioning yourself to not get voted out
2) People deserve an opportunity to "earn" a spot in the F3 even after losing the F4 immunity challenge
3) Being the least threatening player in the F4 means you don't have to "earn" a spot in the F4, but being the second most threatening player in the F4 does

In conclusion, it's dumb as hell

1) no it doesn't. If anything it posits that it's equally valuable
2) it posits that doing something the players don't expect is a worthwhile addition to the show
3) there's always a goat which is why they went to 3 in the first place

In conclusion, it's fine and different and will probably only happen twice because then players will know about it

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Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it
As soon as they mentioned players who made horrible moves I turned to my wife and was like "remember that guy who gave his idol away and got voted out? Who was that guy?"

Then they immediately showed him :D

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008

xbilkis posted:

The F4 twist also posits that

1) Making fire is a more meaningful way of "earning" your way into the F3 than positioning yourself to not get voted out
2) People deserve an opportunity to "earn" a spot in the F3 even after losing the F4 immunity challenge
3) Being the least threatening player in the F4 means you don't have to "earn" a spot in the F4, but being the second most threatening player in the F4 does

In conclusion, it's dumb as hell

Yeah the f4 twist was easily the dumbest part of the season.

SLICK GOKU BABY
Jun 12, 2001

Hey Hey Let's Go! 喧嘩する
大切な物を protect my balls


IcePhoenix posted:

I have no idea if I want to watch that or not

Of course you know you need too.

Shneak
Mar 6, 2015

A sad Professor Plum
sitting on a toilet.
I don't think they expected the backlash over the twists...

Like a yard sale of unlimited idol props.

bagrada
Aug 4, 2007

The Demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering!

Lone Goat posted:

It's super rigged, AND it's all your fault. :mad:

Haha. Sorry. I'll clarify I wanted Devon to win so I was bummed he biffed it at the fire challenge, but of the remaining three I felt Ben earned it and the others failed to stop him. I'd be the first shouting rigged if I was one of them or their loved ones though, craziness.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it
Hopefully the F4 twist will at least be a little different next season - something cleverer than a fire-making challenge.

Who am I kidding it'll be exactly the same

Spergatory
Oct 28, 2012
Like Jesus loving Christ this is so bad. Every time I think about it, it reaches a new level of badness.

Survivor is supposed to be a social game. I do not want to watch a show where the most important skill you can possess is magic necklace finding. I do not want to watch a show where the head-and-shoulders best and most aware social player of the season is eliminated through no fault of his own because of a bullshit twist that has nothing to do with the rest of the game and flies in the face of literally everything that came before it. I do not want to watch a show where for 99 percent of the game, the most important thing is knowing where you stand with people and getting them to do what you want, but then that last 1% requires you to do surprise ginsu knife juggling or you're out! Automatically!

I do not want to watch the show Survivor became this season.

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008

Spergatory posted:

Like Jesus loving Christ this is so bad. Every time I think about it, it reaches a new level of badness.

Survivor is supposed to be a social game. I do not want to watch a show where the most important skill you can possess is magic necklace finding. I do not want to watch a show where the head-and-shoulders best and most aware social player of the season is eliminated through no fault of his own because of a bullshit twist that has nothing to do with the rest of the game and flies in the face of literally everything that came before it. I do not want to watch a show where for 99 percent of the game, the most important thing is knowing where you stand with people and getting them to do what you want, but then that last 1% requires you to do surprise ginsu knife juggling or you're out! Automatically!

I do not want to watch the show Survivor became this season.

"Survivor is the greatest game of social diplomacy ever created" - Probst after a finale where the social game had essentially no part in it

SteveVizsla
Mar 19, 2009

Why do I always want to sock it to you so hard?

IcePhoenix posted:

You should have told her it was Frodo

It took me way too long to realize she meant Radcliffe and not the literary character

SteveVizsla
Mar 19, 2009

Why do I always want to sock it to you so hard?

The Bloop posted:

I can't believe I'm saying this but I hope they eventually do a celebrity survivor

They probably couldn't get good people though for a ton of reasons so idk

You didn't watch the two seasons of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, did you

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008
Only good reality show I've seen that's used celebrity contestants was the Korean game show The Genius.

IcePhoenix
Sep 18, 2005

Take me to your Shida

The first few seasons of Dancing With The Stars were pretty fun if that counts

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008

IcePhoenix posted:

The first few seasons of Dancing With The Stars were pretty fun if that counts

I only watched like 3 eps of that ever and it was mostly because Antonio Brown was on it. I think some deaf model won that season?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I mean, if Ben was voted out before F4 (y'know, if the dum-dums didn't let him hunt for an idol), then the fire twist would actually have been interesting; Devon/Ashley would take each other and force Chrissy/Ryan to fight, and vice versa.

But we'll see how this season blows over after a couple months. I imagine a lot of people are dumping it down there with Redemption Island right now. At least Michele won on her own merits, this season it's not sure if Ben won more because of the dumb cast, or the advantage-happy producers.

Zerilan posted:

I only watched like 3 eps of that ever and it was mostly because Antonio Brown was on it. I think some deaf model won that season?

Nyle DiMarco won a season, yeah. He's a deaf rights activist (and he's sexually fluid for those peeps out there).

Lone Goat
Apr 16, 2003

When life gives you lemons, suplex those lemons.




SteveVizsla posted:

You didn't watch the two seasons of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, did you

Who would ever do this?

mancalamania
Oct 23, 2008
The argument for the Final 4 twist is that it makes ironclad Final 3's less likely to happen which, in theory, makes the endgame a bit more dynamic and prevents a stale last two votes. Of course for this argument to work, the players need to actually know the rules of the game they're playing and should have been told about this twist early in the game so they could strategize accordingly. I don't think it would have made a difference since they didn't intend on letting Ben get that far to begin with, but it' would have at least felt fairer.

I'm hoping that the show course-corrects a little bit in 37/38 after the fan reception to 34 and 35. It's not so much that the twists/idols/advantages are inherently "bad," it's just that they're driving too much of the action. The best episodes of the season were the mid-merge where the big alliance broke apart and the fractured started rapidly turning on each other. The show should be working hard to introduce mechanics that encourage that sort of gameplay, not stifle or override it. The idols worked so well for so long *because* the paranoia they create inherently leads to more lying, backstabbing, and generally less stable alliances. But things like unknowable and unpredictable twists or idols that can be found so late in the game just hours after they are hidden completely override the fun parts of the show and turns it into something else.

It also doesn't help that the easy-to-find-idols and twists-with-unknowable-rule-changes don't interact so well with each other. On the surface, 34 and 35 had the "opposite" problem: in 34 the players hoarded idols whereas in 35 the the players continuously played them. But in both cases the "problems" were only issues because they were colliding in a terrible way with secret twists-- in 34, the unknowable fourth idol with special rules + three hoarded idols creating that terrible Final 6 vote, and in 35 the surprise Final 4 twist letting the guy who was good at Easter Egg hunting skip the one round everyone was counting on where he wasn't allowed to Easter Egg hunt. Just remove the Legacy Advantage from 34 and the Final 4 Twist from this season and you might have Cirie and Devon as the last two winners instead of Sarah and Ben, and I think the fandom would be pretty pumped about the current state of the show.

xbilkis
Apr 11, 2005

god qb
me
jay hova
I don't even see why you need to prevent a stale final two votes. People's gameplay during the beginning of the season should mean something at the end of the season. If you've built a game that's put you in a position to smoothly sail into the end, there should be a limit to the mechanics that get in your way.

The game has a built-in incentive to avoid a stale endgame: People shouldn't want to go to the end with people that could beat them! Contestants on the outside of an endgame alliance can exploit this to work their way back into contention. If you can't do that, and you can't win immunity, then kick rocks, buddy

(I also think there's a reason why the finales are 2-3 boots PLUS final TC -- there's an expectation that those votes are typically more straightforward, so you can move through them more swiftly)

Fedelm
Apr 21, 2013

It's called Ursa Major, not Ursula Merger. And that's not even it. That's Orion.
I wasn't happy with any of the three and or the final vote, I can't respect a win that depended so much on others' repeated stupidity (and by a twist at the end), but the losses were deserved for having not kept Ben from finding the idols.

xbilkis posted:

The more I think about it, the more it sucks that Devon played a game in which:

Yeah I was rooting for Devon. He was one of the ones who stupidly didn't keep an eye on Ben, but I had respect for his superior social game and his move in voting Dr. Mike. He was the only one to not make that particular mistake voting Ben again, and it saved him. People need to stop believing they're safe/in control/etc.

At least the season was interesting for a while.

Also kind of funnysad that Ryan sent that advantage to Chrissy way back in the beginning of the season and then Chrissy brought him to final tribal (and they both lost). I wonder if Chrissy ever brought up that first tribal, where she kept quiet and didn't save Katrina? Bummed that the dead idol was wasted like Lauren's extra vote, so much potential there.

Zerilan posted:

Only good reality show I've seen that's used celebrity contestants was the Korean game show The Genius.

My fiance watches that show and told me that if this was The Genius then when Ben plays the last idol it would be revealed to have been Ryan and Chrissy's fake idol that they already planted for him. :tviv:

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Well the other question is is this cast worse than One World/Tocatins? Both those seasons had casts that would practically jump on a sword to protect Kim/J.T. This season has some colossally dumb moves (see: the last four episodes), but at least the cast was actively trying to get rid of Ben and would have succeeded if not for the fire twist.

mancalamania
Oct 23, 2008
The cast was generally likeable, had distinct personalities, understood the game, and were generally self-interested. Their biggest issue became really clear if you listened to all of the RHAP pre-season interviews: all of the strategic players deliberately said they were going to play conservatively at the beginning and avoid making their big moves until the endgame. The only two that sort of sold themselves as aggressive players from Day 1 were Joe and Mike, who gave us a bunch of entertaining pre-merge scenes but barely ever got a chance to go to Tribal (it's no coincidence that the one pre-merge Tribal Joe did go to was one of the best Tribals of the season).

You don't need 18 Joes to make a good season, but you probably need more than 2 if you want an interesting pre-merge.

CODChimera
Jan 29, 2009

I think that would've been an interesting change to the F4 to tell people about earlier on in the season, not as a secret AT F4. I've had no problem with the idols or advantages but this one is a litttttle bit silly.

I like Ben winning but it does cheapen it a lot. Poor Devon.

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008
I think my biggest problem with the twist is that imo what makes Survivor Survivor is that elimination is ultimately decided by votes. It's what makes it first and foremost a social game. Idols and advantages manipulate that vote process, but it's still the votes that decide. The twist at the last moment rips away from that, and coincidentally serves the purpose of saving the person production clearly wanted to win when he blew the last immunity challenge and would have been the obvious one voted out had the votes mattered.

UltimoDragonQuest
Oct 5, 2011



I really thought Chrissy won the FTC. Joe and Cole(?) wanting a stronger case and not getting Devon's (incredibly stupid) vote looked like huge red flags.

Devon getting hosed and Ryan coasting because he was a goat made the F4 twist terrible. I would be fine if Ryan got a pass because of his day 1 choice and solid alliance with Chrissy but he was safe because he sucked at half the game.

Also this.

Fast Luck posted:

What also annoys me is Jeff said minds were changed at ftc and hyped ftc but wtf. That's crap

HAUNTED IDOL SEASON :ghost: :iiam:

SalTheBard
Jan 26, 2005

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Fallen Rib
Dude this final twist is loving horseshit. I do not loving like this at all.

Rarity
Oct 21, 2010

~*4 LIFE*~
Bad season bad season begone with you

Ghost Island sounds like the biggest clusterfuck but if it lets me relive "It's a loving stick" then I give it all my love.

Murmur Twin
Feb 11, 2003

An ever-honest pacifist with no mind for tricks.
I just caught up with the finale and I liked it less than any other Survivor finale I've ever seen. I can't imagine a less satisfying ending than someone with 0 allies at 7 winning the game due to three idols and a twist.

Vernacular
Nov 29, 2004
Go home, Survivor. You're drunk.

Devon :(

CODChimera
Jan 29, 2009

What is Chrissy going on about mums for? Guess it worked on Ashley.

Man that reunion barely talked to any of the cast, even less than usual.

CODChimera fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Dec 21, 2017

Midrena
May 2, 2009
Man, I got played -- right before watching the show, I stumbled upon a comment on another forum that said "Crissy wins" and I went into the finale thinking I'd been spoilered big time. So the votes that Jeff read at the reunion was a real surprise to me, haha.

Grats to Ben, though I hope in the future the show doesn't so blatantly favor someone in the editing. I doubt anything was rigged but the fact that it just looks like it was is really annoying. Totally agree with people about the hidden immunity idols, they need to change it up somehow.

As much as I may gripe about the show, I always look forward to the next season (kinda hoping they'll keep going until they reach their 20th anniversary, how cool would that be?).

Back in the early seasons of Survivor, I was one of those people who would get really pissed because the contestants I thought "deserved" to win didn't, or found it rage-inducing that those I thought to be "good people" got hosed over. Guess I was still naive and hoping for a meritocracy or something, I dunno. But things changed as the years went by and now I have to say I enjoy the drama-makers because a lot of the time they make for entertaining TV. I mean, one of my favorite contestants in this season was Joe, for goodness sake -- he really annoyed me in the beginning, but he grew on me and he brought the fun, so I was pretty bummed when he got voted out. He was really fun to watch! Ten years ago, I would have loathed him with every part of my being and been happy he was out.

Bigass Moth
Mar 6, 2004

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...

CODChimera posted:

What is Chrissy going on about mums for? Guess it worked on Ashley.

Man that reunion barely talked to any of the cast, even less than usual.

Chrissy was originally on the heroes tribe, because she was a mom. That's it. Her whole persona was "mom". I think she was second place no matter whether Ben or Devon were there because she rubbed too many people the wrong way and came off as phony.

Most of the people this season were pretty bad players. Ashley mentioned to Ryan that he never once talked strategy with her. Others said Ben never talked to them. How does that even happen? You have 24 hours a day with the same people and tons of downtime, how do you not know every single detail about everyone else?

The Bloop
Jul 5, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

Bigass Moth posted:

Chrissy was originally on the heroes tribe, because she was a mom. That's it. Her whole persona was "mom".

Successful, working mom!

Ben needed the money more than any of the final 6 so good on him.




Also I agree that the idol situation is out of hand and that the firebulding TWIST was a bit lame-o BUT I am not going to fault them for trying new things and twists and whatnot. They will probably always do things like this for 2 seasons because of their production schedule, but after that they'll switch it up again because people know about it. Had this been a different group of people under the same circumstances, we may have seen one or two idol plays instead of thirty or whatever. I also don't mind the change at the end because before final immunity is double win since you can effectively choose your F3 in addition to being safe. This takes some of that away. Maybe a different kind of challenge next time.

xbilkis
Apr 11, 2005

god qb
me
jay hova
Jeff, justifying the twist:

quote:

This idea came about to solve a problem that has bothered me for years. If someone plays a great game and gets to the final four, it has always bothered me that the other three can simply say, “We can’t beat him, so let’s all just vote him out.” So this year we decided to make a change. If you get to final four, you are guaranteed a shot to earn your way to the end.

Yes...if only there were some gameplay mechanic that allowed people to avoid getting voted off...

Bigass Moth
Mar 6, 2004

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...
If they had even done a "know your tribemates" trivia it would have been more rewarding than a fire making challenge.

I can't believe Devon was on board with Chrissy's idiotic plan to protect Ryan. No way in hell I'd go for that instead of convincing her that everyone on the jury hated Ben and he wouldn't win. She must have known she couldn't beat Devon.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Malcolm is a prime example of how you can be a big threat and still manage to get yourself in a good position to hit FTC because of your social game. He just screwed himself over when he wouldn't commit to Denise. Or how Bob had his bond with Sugar save him and led to him winning Gabon.

Ben is a decent player but his social game was bad. In fact the twist is bad for players like Devon.

If you want to get that 50-50 shot of firemaking your way to the FTC despite being a huge threat, then use those social skills like Bob or Aubry or Carolyn.

I think ever since Michele won the producers seem to be going out of their way to weaken players with really good social games.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I don't have a real problem with the fire making twist. Final Four, Final Three, Final Two. It all seems kind of arbitrary to me and we've been getting these idols and twists and advantages for so long now that its just part of the game. Besides, I think people are underselling how it could factor more into strategy and social gameplay. A different breakdown easily could have made that fire making challenge more strategically interesting if it had been a 2 vs 2 divide or if Ben had been the one who had won Immunity. And I got way more entertainment from that fire making challenge than I would have from them just voting Ben out. I don't know. I don't think Survivor is "sacred". Its not a "sport" or anything to me. Its a TV game show and I don't have "respect" for that. Its just dumb pulp entertainment to me so I guess I don't care TOO much when it gets screwed with.

Chrissy would be a great player if she had an ounce of humility or self awareness. Instead she spent that tribal all but admitting that she dug personal facts out of people so she could cynically use it to prove how good a social game she played and basically argued that they should all be proud she beat them. Imagine how good Chrissy would be if she could hide her motives sometimes or pull off stuff like that lame attempt to play Ben for a jury vote. She has instincts and smarts, she just is too drat proud of herself to pull it off right

I'm going to spend years arguing with people that Devon was overrated. He was smart, don't get me wrong. I would have been fine with him winning and that Mike vote is the sort of smart gameplay he showed all season. But I also think it looks more impressive because of how stupid most of the cast was. But Devon didn't play some amazing game, IMO. He voted out his closest ally at F6 (which could very well have made a difference in how his game ended), he was one of the people guilty of playing lazy and cocky and letting Ben find those idols, and I'm going to need a real good justification for that Ryan vote if I'm going to believe he isn't at least half a moron. I'd like to see him back and like I said, I wouldn't have been mad if he won. But I ain't crying for him failing to start a fire that Chrissy gave him a head's up on so he could practice only for him to decide not to because he thought he got a sign not to. This was a dumb cast.

I'm not mad about Ben's win but I don't have the general problems that a lot of posters do. I don't mind the Ben archetype. I don't bristle at "troops" stuff as hard as many do (and I don't think Ben played it hard). I don't "edit read" and get wound about "winner narratives" or stuff like that. I didn't get invested in Devon so I didn't get offended he "got screwed." And like I said, I don't think I get worked up about "the integrity of the game." Ben worked his rear end off to survive and I can respect that. gently caress, if I was production I probably would have been tempted to plant that last idol just because of how lazy the rest of the tribe was being while he was looking. "Hustle" is a legit Survivor quality in my books. Ben's not a great all time winner or anything but he played hard all season, has a solid resume, and was fairly likable. I'm ok with it.

And besides, the only real value this season had was watching Ben torture Chrissy by constantly thwarting her plans.

To Ryan's credit at least he knew he was the goat who didn't deserve to win.

So I assume next season is just another "Second Chances" season but with players who specifically made infamous game ending mistakes? Or something weirder?

STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Dec 21, 2017

Rarity
Oct 21, 2010

~*4 LIFE*~

STAC Goat posted:

I'm going to need a real good justification for that Ryan vote if I'm going to believe he isn't at least half a moron.

Ryan was his best mate in the game, it's not that complicated

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Rarity posted:

Ryan was his best mate in the game, it's not that complicated

I mean, fine, but I'm not going to respect the great gamer Devon more because he threw his vote away on his bestie (who didn't really seem like his bestie most of the game and he voted out his other bestie a few weeks ago).

Its his vote, its his prerogative. But its the final impression he left on me this season.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
It's an all new cast. And hip hooray, no weird factor on how the tribes are divided for once!

I don't think the fire twist is the worst thing ever (and really with how many people were decrying the jury remover there's always gonna be some uproar over the New Thing). But it shouldn't last more than a couple seasons, because part of what made some of the previous fire tiebreakers (Becky/Sundra, Aubry/Cydney, Rodney/Carolyn) entertaining was because someone forced a tie. There was a decision factor into that process. Now when you watch the F4 you're just thinking, 'well, two people are gonna make fire', and I think it'll affect the scrambling after the final immunity challenge. Do you try to persuade the winner to take you for that guaranteed shot, or does that look like you got carried there? But the novelty will wear off (and it's already starting to for a lot of people) after a season or two.

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SLICK GOKU BABY
Jun 12, 2001

Hey Hey Let's Go! 喧嘩する
大切な物を protect my balls


Maybe if it's somehow a returnee season that wasn't pumped up as a returnee season. I would think they would shove it down our throats more than just having a few clips of people making bad Survivor moves.

It was really the most vague season preview I think they have ever done. Have no idea what the new season will be.

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