Hydra Discussion Thread

[Noraa]

I agree with 2 players max definitely

[Noraa]

I've never played with a hydra, but I'm curious to know if we think hydraing is an advantage or a disadvantage for the players in the game? It kind of seems like it's an advantage having someone you know you can trust to talk things over with and not getting as burnt out, but I could see there being some drawbacks as well. But most hydras do tend to have a more dominant hydra head, which can be a nice way for people with busy lives to still get to play, but I would also like to see more hydras which are truly equal partnerships.

Also if our games are going to continue to struggle to fill like this one did, maybe having large numbers of hydras in games is not the way to go, especially when we're talking about 24+ person games

its an advantage but some people need it and others just work so well together that I would stan it anyways

[Noraa]

I didn't even realize more than two was a thing that sounds fucking horrible

[Noraa]

I think equal hydras are scary because you could hit it off with one head and get stabbed and you can't even blame them

[Noraa]

I think in a way hydras are advantageous for two reasons
1) you have one true ally that will never betray you
and
2) you have two chances.

What I mean by number 2 is that if one head fucks up, people will still give the other head a chance.

[Noraa]

I think in a way hydras are advantageous for two reasons
1) you have one true ally that will never betray you
and
2) you have two chances.

What I mean by number 2 is that if one head fucks up, people will still give the other head a chance.

but they are still good imo. Like for someone that doesn't have time/is new, a hydra could make life much better for them!

[Noraa]

I also don't think having more than 3 hydras total is a good idea unless the whole game is hydras.

I would love a whole game of hydras to be run. Like a 12 person Big Brother game with only hydras? Yes please.

that sounds scary af tbh

[Noraa]

a full hydra survivor game sounds scary as fuck.

[Noraa]

I think in a way hydras are advantageous for two reasons
1) you have one true ally that will never betray you
and
2) you have two chances.

What I mean by number 2 is that if one head fucks up, people will still give the other head a chance.

Point 2 is incorrect.

Nobody said "Damn, hare screwed up for voting maggie, but tortoise is chill so who cares" or "Damn, whatever droid suggested the bees blindside screwed up, but the other one is fine". One person screws up, it tanks both their games. Because they are a single slot. That's how it works.

yeah maybe not if you mess up badly but if its a small mistake, it is possible

As well as if one member is less liked, they can send the other member for certain things like talking about votes towards the end or ftc.

[Noraa]

Happy scum day Roro!

[Noraa]

I think equal hydras are scary because you could hit it off with one head and get stabbed and you can't even blame them

First off WTF is this foreshadowing. I didn't mean it to be but DAMN.

Second, I want to share what I think about hydras now having hydra'd and gotten possibly the largest amount of criticism from the specs. I'm not sure I saw a single positive comment regarding us in the spec forum but I could have missed it since I read all of that last night and I was really tired. So first, I won't talk about the id part of our hydra but I absolutely don't agree with most of the comments made on it.

Onto the hydra part, was it an advantage? I think a lot of people think yes and I'm not sure I agree anymore. I think I put in far more effort this game than ever before. Mist and I got into big fights more often than not? Overall, I do think that I would not have won the game alone. I'm not sure if I can say that for Mist. But essentially, I don't think there were any benefits besides in experience. The entire game, I was controlling our pming basically. I got to chose our allies, our connections, and took a big part in choosing who in the remaining would die. Despite Mist being more experienced, I would say that I was steering the wheel for most of the game. The biggest benefit I saw was that when I was about to crash our game, Mist would immediately start working around that. That most certainly showed that Mist was more experienced than me and was a very clear benefit because I would have just died there instead of fix the problem on my own. But this also shows that Mist was paying attention and reading absolutely everything because they would know immediately when things were looking bad and jump in. Both Mist and I read everything in the game despite having each other and this contributed to a lot of our success because we both knew exactly what was happening.

Essentially, I think that hydras can work out to compliment each other if they put in enough effort. We fought so hard and disagreed on EVERY tiny thing at the beginning. Mist decided Odysseus going was ok but I still wanted radiance. I started distrusting Hermes and Mist just didn't agree. I didn't like Persephone and Mist didn't agree. I wanted to blindside F&K and Mist didn't agree. There were so many fights. In the end, I think that if enough effort is put in, YES hydras are an advantage. However, I do not believe that hydras are an advantage in general. In a hydra there are a lot of things to balance out and if not balanced properly, the hydra will die FOR BEING A HYDRA. A great example is F&K. They died for being a hydra. Had they been separated, they would be similar players to maybe Viy in our books. But we distrusted them because their heads disagreed on things. They seemed like they weren't communicative and we deemed that too unstable. Obviously there were other factors but that was my reasoning when I started disliking them which was the round before they actually died.

As a hydra of two COMPLETE OPPOSITES in every single way possible, we made it work out because of our EFFORT. Had we not put in effort, I am 100% sure that we would've died a pretty early death, possibly not even making jury. If hydras were a big problem, every game with hydras would be won by a hydra. I think a lot of people don't see the effort that these winning hydras have put in/choose to ignore it and say they won because they were in a hydra. Did you see Awoo's strategy thread(55 pages, 814 posts)? Or how long they spent talking about the game behind the scenes? Hydras are, in my opinion, a disadvantage unless the two heads step up their game and turn it into an advantage. There is no inherent challenge advantage in my opinion. I get that we can switch off in the case of a serious conflict but a normal player would get a spec to do the challenge for them. Is there really a big difference there honestly? Hydras switch off doing the challenge and challenge ability is determined by each individual's experience with challenges. That isn't going to magically change because you are in a hydra. I placed last in a good chunk of the challenges but my strengths did show through because I did do ok in some of them and bring back a gold medal in one

For social game, I absolutely think hydras can be advantageous but only if you take the time to realize HOW it can be an advantage. There are also many ways to go wrong despite all of that. If one head really pisses someone off, your whole hydra is just dead in their eyes. It takes a very good social game to fix something like that. I think that hydras are not an advantage unless made into one and honestly, if that level of effort is put in, they DESERVE to go far for it. I think that in Pantheon, we put in a LOT of effort. I'm hesitant to say we put in the MOST effort of all the players in the game because I haven't read everything yet but I think its absolutely possible.

Lastly, as we said in our closing speech, our play styles together created a whiplash effect. I genuinely was willing to sacrifice our game for people whereas Mist was solely looking for how to win. We formed extremely strong bonds but then had to vote them out. It created a lot of issues with jury management and we went into jury getting yelled at by multiple jurors for stabbing/lying to them. Mist was telling me like damn I'm so sorry Noraa this is probably the saltiest jury I've ever seen. We both contributed to this because meshing our plays was very difficult and we struggled all game with it. Despite all of these challenges, I think we fought really really hard and put in TONS and TONS of effort which was the main factor contributing to our win, not the fact that we were a hydra. Being a hydra brought many challenges and I think only overcoming those will make being a hydra an advantage. But the amount of effort required to do that is far more than enough to justify going far in a game.

[Noraa]

Anubis <3 Thank you! And thank you Magnoodles <3

It is an opportunity. But so is everything else in survivor.
Each pm chain you start is an opportunity. You can make the most of it, like Hathor did. Or you can be inactive and be booted fast like O-ren.
Each challenge is an opportunity. You can slay the 3d maze challenge like Hathor did. Or you can get last place on Cassandras swap and a bunch of others that I did like Hathor did.

Everything is an opportunity and just like any other opportunity, it has its advantages and disadvantages. If you overcome the obstacles, it is an advantage.

With pm chains, you can create solid alliances and skyrocket to the top of their rankings like I did with Jesus and many others in this game.
With challenges, you can win immunity like Mist did with that one creative challenge.
On the down side,
You can say one wrong thing and never establish a bond between you and the person
You can not get immunity the one round you need it and die.

Everything in survivor is an opportunity and the possibility of hydra'ing is no different from any of the other opportunities.

[Noraa]

Yeah maybe I guess being able to bounce ideas was good. I dont really agree that it's like an amazing thing. Personally, I really didn't take in much of what Mist said just because I was very stubborn about my own beliefs and whatever. I dont see it as a very obvious benefit in this case but I guess I can agree that, overall, its' a pretty strong point.

I mean I do agree that Mist was an easy guess for who would hydra with Noraa but given D3f was the only one that ided Mist and didn't even play ...... that point might as well not exist. Going through confessionals, and Im not even done, I've seen FIVE people say Maat was Noraa now. I have yet to see anyone say EITHER OF US is Mist7676 cuz I haven't seen it.

Also re: Haschie's point, I dont really agree. Like uhhh I didn't know about the hydra rule about challenges. I had thought that we were allowed to switch off whenever we wanted to and my plan was to do most of the challenges and have mist do the important ones where we needed immunity so I kind of see that point being abused. I thought it would be really cool to have immunity the rounds we needed it and just get to do the rest of the challenges myself and flunk them all so I guess its prolly not good to let hydras just do whatever they want because they can do that. Though, admittedly, someone with good challenge performance on their own could also do that so it's not specific to hydras.

Either way, I absolutely agree that every person has their own strengths and those are already unfair "advantages". Nothing is done about that/if you want to argue stuff is being done, there are plenty of hydras that get targeted for being hydras. I think there's not an unfair advantage because in the end, it still depends on the players if they want to go far and not a hydra mechanic.

[Noraa]

Oh holy shit its my scum day. I've been on MS for a year. Holy hell