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Post by River Song on Mar 24, 2020 15:51:07 GMT
Yo what up guys thanks for the super fun game I had a great time, not sure why I got mad but peace I'm happy OMG ZOD HAD ALREADY TALKED TO US AND I COMPLETELY MISSED IT WOW stay and chat!
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Post by Kat on Mar 24, 2020 16:58:33 GMT
I feel largely positive about this format, and think most of the issues come down to the cast, quits, or pacing issues (i.e. jumping from the final 10 pairs to the final 6 way too quickly). So I don't want to seem too negative, but I do have one general suggestion for a rules change if this is ever run again.
I think the biggest issue with the format is that while you win as a pair, your partner from the start is very unlikely to be your partner at the end of the game, unless you NEVER face the Eliminator. And unless you approach this game with the mentality of trying to make it all the way with your partner, and if you expect to be broken up at any moment, you're not going to have much attachment to your partner. Getting sent in guarantees that your pairing, as it exists, is destroyed. This makes getting selected by the winning team, getting voted in, or becoming victim to a sponsor is much more demotivating than it would be if there was always a chance that your pair could stick together. Therefore, I would have made it so the Eliminator is always an individual challenge with the top two performers coming out alive.
I have to note that it is a strength of the format that it's a viable strategy to send in a strong team and a weak team the same round, so that a strong player gets saddled with a weak one. But that's much harder to coordinate with the voting being set up the way it was in this game. You don't know for sure who the winning team is going to send in before you cast your vote, so you can't react to it. If the winning pair had to immediately make their choice upon winning the challenge, it would be interesting giving the pair that's already going in the chance to try and influence the vote and decide their opponent, and the rest of the cast would have a more varied decision when casting their vote.
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Post by Effie Trinket on Mar 24, 2020 17:07:43 GMT
That is all fabulous feedback...it actually gives me some ideas for a potential second Hybrid game...
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Post by Caesar Flickerman on Mar 24, 2020 17:39:48 GMT
I feel largely positive about this format, and think most of the issues come down to the cast, quits, or pacing issues (i.e. jumping from the final 10 pairs to the final 6 way too quickly). So I don't want to seem too negative, but I do have one general suggestion for a rules change if this is ever run again. I think the biggest issue with the format is that while you win as a pair, your partner from the start is very unlikely to be your partner at the end of the game, unless you NEVER face the Eliminator. And unless you approach this game with the mentality of trying to make it all the way with your partner, and if you expect to be broken up at any moment, you're not going to have much attachment to your partner. Getting sent in guarantees that your pairing, as it exists, is destroyed. This makes getting selected by the winning team, getting voted in, or becoming victim to a sponsor is much more demotivating than it would be if there was always a chance that your pair could stick together. Therefore, I would have made it so the Eliminator is always an individual challenge with the top two performers coming out alive. I have to note that it is a strength of the format that it's a viable strategy to send in a strong team and a weak team the same round, so that a strong player gets saddled with a weak one. But that's much harder to coordinate with the voting being set up the way it was in this game. You don't know for sure who the winning team is going to send in before you cast your vote, so you can't react to it. If the winning pair had to immediately make their choice upon winning the challenge, it would be interesting giving the pair that's already going in the chance to try and influence the vote and decide their opponent, and the rest of the cast would have a more varied decision when casting their vote. We appreciate this feedback. The biggest challenge we faced with having the top performers survive the eliminator is that in those rounds, quits/medevacs were more complex to process. Totally agree that the hope of being able to survive with your partner would create a diff dynamic that has some positives. Honestly, the main reason we made the design choice to reveal both at the same time was to make voting phase shorter. In practice, we did see Susan influence the voting round based on who she wanted to be partnered with, but in both the twist rounds it at least appeared like those being automatically sent seemed sorta depressed by it and thus less involved. I agree it would have an interesting impact though. If the immune pair had to immediately choose who they were sending in, that would save time as well, it just wasn't what we predicted would be most enjoyable in this iteration.
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Post by Shuichi Saihara on Mar 24, 2020 18:36:27 GMT
I definitely agree that the most frustrating thing was that you were unlikely to get to come out with your partner under the basic format of the game, despite you being with them a while. I also feel that because the only way to change partners was essentially going into the eliminator it made the game kind of static for people who had inactive partners. Like I don't think Shadow or Pikachu ever really got to play because they were always going to be forced into the eliminator because the people they were paired with were getting targeted, in the case with Shadow this happened twice because if you end up in the eliminator, you are likely in there with people people wanted in their, not allowing a lot of upward mobility in the game.
I think the main changes to help that would be to just have a period of the game where your partner will be different every round, it'd allow a lot more social interaction with people you didn't talk to initially and probably lead to a lot of interesting alliances or partnerships of bitter enemies. Then maybe for near the end (or like final 5/6 pairs) you can have people decide their pairs for the rest of the game now that they know how well they work with everyone and if you end up in a pairing with a partner everyone else isn't a fan of, you just have to worry about getting out that round, not just wait for the inevitable.
Additionally it might be better to instead of making "you vs your partner" be the default eliminator format. Make the default either "Pair vs pair" (this is fine if pairs are constantly changing) or "free for all", obviously this does complicate medevacs (particularly with pair vs pair, free for all) but worst comes to worst you have to swap out an eliminator. This way pulling out the "you vs your partner" is more novel and has more of an impact.
Those would probably be the biggest changes that don't compromise the format but help it be less frustrating at times.
I might also suggest instead making the bottom team go in as a default and have the top team have a regular vote that also tiebreaks (and being immune) since I feel they just get way too much power as is, but those could still be a bit problematic depending on how you think a team will react to being automatically in the eliminator.
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Post by Caesar Flickerman on Mar 24, 2020 18:59:16 GMT
Honestly, I think that some of what you suggest does compromise the format we had in mind (which we attempted to make very clear in the rules, and include minimal twists, so that people would know what novel format they were getting into.) But these are definitely good ideas for a future iteration of the pairs concept.
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Post by Seneca Crane on Mar 24, 2020 19:07:54 GMT
I'm a little surprised personally that the core idea fell so flat. The central idea of the game was that you developed a relationship with your partner who you collaborated with until you entered the Eliminator. Once sent to the Eliminator, the game was meant to change for you from a pair game to an individual game. Going to the Eliminator means that you team is dead, full stop.
If you manage to survive the Eliminator, you have a new partner and need to work with them to continue playing the game.
Like "you are unlikely to make it to the end with your original partner" isn't a bug. It's a feature and the defining mechanic of the game as described in the original ruleset.
I am a little surprised that folks also ended up being disinterested in talking to each other and just hanging out, especially since we placed a premium in signups on players who wanted to put in effort and really be sociable with one another.
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Post by Effie Trinket on Mar 24, 2020 19:46:22 GMT
Yeah it wouldn't really be "Hybrid" if we didn't actually make any Hybrid pairs
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Post by Shuichi Saihara on Mar 24, 2020 19:51:19 GMT
I'm a little surprised personally that the core idea fell so flat. The central idea of the game was that you developed a relationship with your partner who you collaborated with until you entered the Eliminator. Once sent to the Eliminator, the game was meant to change for you from a pair game to an individual game. Going to the Eliminator means that you team is dead, full stop. If you manage to survive the Eliminator, you have a new partner and need to work with them to continue playing the game. Like "you are unlikely to make it to the end with your original partner" isn't a bug. It's a feature and the defining mechanic of the game as described in the original ruleset. I mean in hindsight I think that is kind of the problem. Like in any game whether survivor or big brother you know that a lot of the relationships are doomed to end in someone being voted out and gone (or on the jury) but you get to pick and choose which of those relationships you want to last and invest in. In here, the most core relationship and person you are tied to, is designed to fail, designed to not matter because eliminated players don't even really get any impact on the rest of the game. There is no choice there, just despair. In fact it means that you should probably just not invest in that relationship with your partner beyond the bare minimum to make them not dislike you so a challenge isn't thrown, and invest all the rest of your time in talking to everyone else, which isn't exactly the most encouraging thing. I mean that didn't happen in my case because River is one of the best people I've had the pleasure of playing a game with, but like I can see how it can be problematic looking on it in hindsight. Ftr I think it's a good end game mechanic (since there is a decent chance of running the table with your partner at that point), but only after a long honeymoon period and not decided upon after just 48 hours of messaging.
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Post by Seneca Crane on Mar 24, 2020 20:39:09 GMT
I am a little sad that people need to be so heavily incentivized to care about another player outside of their immediate or endgame utility.
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Post by Caesar Flickerman on Mar 24, 2020 20:43:16 GMT
D3 has completed the challenge with a score of 24986/25000. No other districts have competed yet
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Post by Dave Strider on Mar 24, 2020 21:06:13 GMT
great score!
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Post by Zod on Mar 24, 2020 21:46:07 GMT
Yo what up guys thanks for the super fun game I had a great time, not sure why I got mad but peace I'm happy OMG ZOD HAD ALREADY TALKED TO US AND I COMPLETELY MISSED IT WOW stay and chat! Hi
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Post by Shadow on Mar 24, 2020 23:16:36 GMT
I mean, I think the game would have been fun, if you didn't have back to back rounds where three tribes went in. Especially since you did incentivize that you wont be with your partner until the endgame. Yet the first time the three teams went in. One district pair that came partnered up together, left partnered up together. I also know that with the Med Evac of Coco hurt me too, I don't remember if she made it clear before or during the Eliminator that they were doing so. Yet later down the road when 12 medvac Susan ended up becoming safe.
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Post by River Song on Mar 24, 2020 23:43:39 GMT
I definitely didn’t know Coco was also a medevac
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Post by Caesar Flickerman on Mar 24, 2020 23:44:23 GMT
The reason your District was sent to the eliminator was due to being voted in. Afterward, Coco opted not to participate in the eliminator challenge, increasing everyone in the eliminator's chance of survival. We outlined when revealing the twist rounds that it was a unique circumstance where the best 2 of 6 would survive. Under those circumstances, it was not Districts competing within themselves, so we did not choose to limit one District member to return for those specific twists.
I stand by the twist rounds as really helping out with the pacing of the game. There are other ways they could have been implemented that can be considered for any future similar formats, but in general I feel positive about our iteration of them.
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Post by River Song on Mar 24, 2020 23:45:18 GMT
Zod do you have any updated post-game thoughts about your strategy?
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Post by Zod on Mar 25, 2020 1:23:56 GMT
Yeah I knew this was coming because the plan I was too lazy to execute at f6 was d10 into d4 vs d7
Other than that my only path to endgame was an immunity run or getting a lucky eliminator win over fen
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Post by Zod on Mar 25, 2020 1:24:59 GMT
You seem like you have something in particular to talk about? Me I know what happened and I'm cool
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Post by Caesar Flickerman on Mar 25, 2020 1:45:24 GMT
D8 has submitted a score of 23286 - they second-guessed themselves on the first location and ended up in the wrong city, but I believe did extremely well otherwise
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Post by River Song on Mar 25, 2020 1:46:09 GMT
Actually not really lol. I just appreciated your confessional and wondered if you had other thoughts to share!
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Post by River Song on Mar 25, 2020 1:46:42 GMT
D8 has submitted a score of 23286 - they second-guessed themselves on the first location and ended up in the wrong city, but I believe did extremely well otherwise Ooooooh Kirby gonna be piiiiiiiiiiissed
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Post by Caesar Flickerman on Mar 25, 2020 1:56:05 GMT
This has been an entertaining challenge to watch. D3 had more of a focus on the navigator showing visuals and their conversation was generally about landmarks rather than streets. Tracer managed to get a perfect score on one location in about 3 minutes without Fenrir even having time to contribute. (D3 still took longer overall.) D8 had a lot more back and forth conversation that focused on streets.
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Post by Zod on Mar 25, 2020 2:24:17 GMT
Actually not really lol. I just appreciated your confessional and wondered if you had other thoughts to share! Nah I dont really care how the game goes from here tbh I'm cool but like I'm not invested enough to actually spec lol
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Post by Kat on Mar 25, 2020 19:06:47 GMT
You were a blast to watch Zod
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