Hydra Discussion Thread

[Aronis]

Hydrae are inherently unbalanced.

First, hydrae are going to have more time to spend playing the game. This gives them an advantage in the sense that they can spend twice as much time hunting for idols. They also can message people more often, etc. Having more time and resources to devote to playing the game is an advantage.

Second, hydrae will have twice as many skills at their disposal. One of the challenges of survivor is that players have a variety of different skills and have to play to their strengths to do well. As somebody who plays more UTR, if I come into merge with an unusually high threat level I'm going to struggle to adjust and play correctly. With a hydrae I may have a partner very experienced with that circumstance that I can let take over and play for me. Hydrae create a more well rounded and balanced player. The idea that some people will struggle to work together, while holding limited merit, is flawed. I contend that most of the time they can collaborate effectively no matter what and the fact that in most instances you get to choose your partner means you can be expected to work particularly well together in almost all instances. furthermore, expecting hydrae to play particularly poorly is a terrible balance mechanism for multiple reasons.

Third, hydrae will be inherently harder for other players to read. One example of this, is survivor challenges often follow a similar veins and so I can anticipate if player X is likely to be good at a lot of challenges and take them out prior to a situation where they could go on a challenge run and guarantee themselves a spot at FTC. I'm going to have a significantly smaller sample size to evaluate when examining a hydra and an added level of randomness because I won't know who's doing what challenge. That makes playing much harder for a solo player.

I also think the idea that the solution to this advantage is that you should basically just policy vote out hydrae is a terrible one for a variety of reasons. I can elaborate if anyone cares.

The idea that hydrae are balanced in their current state against single players is false. I don't think that means they should necessarily never be used. I think it ultimately comes down to what game moderators decide and their decision should be rooted in a desire to design a game both they enjoy and also, importantly, one the community will as well. The community's willingness to play in said games serves as an important check against moderators as well. So in a situation where that inherent balance barrier was removed by everybody being in a hydrae or accepted in exchange for increased player enjoyment would be understandable. I also think the addition of game complexity ratings and moderator disclosures that MS has developed and encouraged over the years are very important and helpful.

[Aronis]

I'll tell you one thing, this thread is really making me never want to play as a hydra because I feel like even if you win as a hydra, people are gonna be like "oh no, you were a hydra, such a huuuuuuge advantage" and it's almost like your win doesn't fully count. That sounds pretty depressing to me.

Like I'm mostly against hydras and returnees on a game design level, but for me- the job of survivor is to play the best you can and adapt to the twists in the game, so like I don't really think it'd be fair to immediately discount a returnee or hydra just because they made it that far in a game that allowed it. Because at the point that they lose an ftc instantly off of that seems fucked up. And so if you can prove you best adapted and played to the mechanics allowed, then you absolutely deserve my vote. But I may be in the minority regarding this view.

[Aronis]

This might be really difficult since there's just not a large sample size of games at all, but if you want ELO to stay truly accurate, you could list a hydra as its own account separate from the players in it? So that way if I get carried to the end by somebody really talented it wouldn't inflate my elo but it would still be kept track of and continue counting if we played with each other again.