Hydra Discussion Thread

[D3f3nd3r]

Ego because I feel very strongly that hydras in games are very bad and don't know how to put that into words yet.

[D3f3nd3r]

Yeah I will say that I'd love to explore the design space of two-player teams a bit more (in game forms that aren't Endurance and don't come down to rock-paper-scissors games).

[D3f3nd3r]

All of these games were either Advanced or Complex on the rating scale. In terms of which games should have them I would say that they should probably never be in a Vanilla game and used extremely sparingly in a Standard. If it IS a standard game then they should be limited in number and also expressly flagged out as such to the players.

Quick note to this - personal opinion here, but unless the hydras are a part of the mechanics of the game, it should be made aware

regardless of the game type.

I'd even take this a step further, and

force hydras to sign or otherwise make it VERY AWARE WHICH HEAD IS CURRENTLY ACTIVE.

I didn't force this in Barely Survivor, each hydra came to that decision on their own and I think it's very important for clarity reasons.

I mean I do also feel like there should've been different accounts for each of the two heads of the hydras.

[D3f3nd3r]

All of these games were either Advanced or Complex on the rating scale. In terms of which games should have them I would say that they should probably never be in a Vanilla game and used extremely sparingly in a Standard. If it IS a standard game then they should be limited in number and also expressly flagged out as such to the players.

Quick note to this - personal opinion here, but unless the hydras are a part of the mechanics of the game, it should be made aware

regardless of the game type.

I'd even take this a step further, and

force hydras to sign or otherwise make it VERY AWARE WHICH HEAD IS CURRENTLY ACTIVE.

I didn't force this in Barely Survivor, each hydra came to that decision on their own and I think it's very important for clarity reasons.

I mean I do also feel like there should've been different accounts for each of the two heads of the hydras.

Then you just create a groupchat with both of them and congratulations it's basically the same thing? Feels pointless and clogging.

And what happens when you have different non-strategy-related conversations with both heads? Feels confusing and clogging.

[D3f3nd3r]

All of these games were either Advanced or Complex on the rating scale. In terms of which games should have them I would say that they should probably never be in a Vanilla game and used extremely sparingly in a Standard. If it IS a standard game then they should be limited in number and also expressly flagged out as such to the players.

Quick note to this - personal opinion here, but unless the hydras are a part of the mechanics of the game, it should be made aware

regardless of the game type.

I'd even take this a step further, and

force hydras to sign or otherwise make it VERY AWARE WHICH HEAD IS CURRENTLY ACTIVE.

I didn't force this in Barely Survivor, each hydra came to that decision on their own and I think it's very important for clarity reasons.

I mean I do also feel like there should've been different accounts for each of the two heads of the hydras.

Then you just create a groupchat with both of them and congratulations it's basically the same thing? Feels pointless and clogging.

And what happens when you have different non-strategy-related conversations with both heads? Feels confusing and clogging.

If they're signing their posts, it's exactly like being in a group chat. It's not that bad at all. It's really no different either way.

I think the reason I'm weirded out here is like, if this was a non-anon game and you were on a tribe with a hydra, you would never attempt to reach out to either head individually?

[D3f3nd3r]

(Also mods are always going to attempt to group players together such that they are much more likely than not to get along.)

[D3f3nd3r]

I think two things:

1. Leave it as host choice on whether or not they are allowed.
2. If you are going to have them, make it known it’s an option so people know whether it’ll be their cup of tea or not. Also make it very clear how the hydra will operate in that game to balance things out.

Is there really any further discussion needed on the subject?

And then when every mod likes hydras and I refuse to play any game because of this, that's problem solved, right?

Sorry, not a great day, but this comment feels very dismissive.

[D3f3nd3r]

Like it *seems* that categorically there are players that would refuse to play games with hydras based on both this thread and some stuff in confessionals early into this past game, and I don't want them to have to funnel into the one game a year that one of us decides to mod.

[D3f3nd3r]

I think two things:

1. Leave it as host choice on whether or not they are allowed.
2. If you are going to have them, make it known it’s an option so people know whether it’ll be their cup of tea or not. Also make it very clear how the hydra will operate in that game to balance things out.

Is there really any further discussion needed on the subject?

And then when every mod likes hydras and I refuse to play any game because of this, that's problem solved, right?

Sorry, not a great day, but this comment feels very dismissive.

Not the intent. More just trying to see if I could find a compromise and be inclusive to both sides of the fence.

Clearly it was taken not as that.

Carry on.

I mean, realistically what you suggested is a valid answer. The best I think I could reasonably hope for given the majority response is that with the added parameter of "hydras will not be allowed in consecutive games" or something similar. I was mostly reacting to the last sentence of what you wrote.

[D3f3nd3r]

Small correction to that. The veteran hydra came first, but the hydra that was two new players made it into the merge without issue and could have made it a decent distance in if they didn't both spontaneously agree to make a weird move during the ranger vote, and the hydra that was a new player and a veteran was quite well-liked but was just slow in acquiring allies. All three hydras did totally fine, and the mixed hydra doing the worst was an oddity because it was pablito and a real-life friend of his.

I'd be totally fine to add an inclination that veterans cannot hydra with other veterans because I think that's the real problem clause here that may be problematic [in addition to the burnout thing, which I do think should be addressed above and beyond everything else]. I don't think a veteran/newbie or double newbie hydra could cause nearly as many issues.

I do also want to see what happens to the newbie heads of those two hydras next time (if) they play! And I'm curious how they'd have done alone in a game. Hard to really analyze without the comparison, considering we get a very wild range of newbies from me not PMing anybody my first game to people like Maclow/Snakes going and winning their first time out.

[D3f3nd3r]

I really doubt you could wrangle two dozen players willing to be in hydras for a 12-slot game with any sort of regularity. I think it'd be fun to do once but also the appeal seems like it'll dry out very fast since there's really not a ton of design space with a 12-slot game. Like we've only been talking about doing it as BB, because Survivor isn't going to be feasible.

[D3f3nd3r]

Monty how many cuts (if any) did you have to make for Magic Kingdom?

[D3f3nd3r]

I know that at the very least I wasn’t attacking you, I was generally complaining (and once the dust settles, will probably continue to complain) about the concept. Nobody should be giving you/Mist crap for taking advantage of the opportunity you were given.

[D3f3nd3r]

I mean, what it’s starting to turn into is an “if it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck” situation. It certainly looks like an advantage, and it’s played out as an advantage (a hydra has won both games where hydras were presented as a feature as opposed to as a twist), so it’s probably an advantage.

Even if it’s a bit contentious at times like you and Mist apparently were, I really don’t think that takes away the massive benefit of actually having another person to bounce things off of. I would imagine that you two did as well as you did because you actually talked through your disagreements, and most of the time your solutions (for strategic decisions, for FTC, and so on) we’re somewhere between what the two of you initially came in thinking. Having two sets of eyes on your gameplay is so unbelievably powerful.

[D3f3nd3r]

Seconding all of Malkon's points. Yes let's please have an all-hydra game of some sort. But also letting two active players pick each other was in my opinion, an incredibly bad decision - I don't hate the way Barely Survivor implemented it (you could "pick" your partner as long as you or they are new to LSGs, as I believe MURDERCAT did), but giving them carte blanche is really bad. And I'm not saying that from the perspective of competitive balance, since presumably that's already being accounted for.

[D3f3nd3r]

I mean, there are a lot of potential issues but they can be highlighted pretty clearly by the fact that immediately upon realizing that Noraa was one half of M+H I was seriously considering Mist to be the other half of it despite having absolutely no evidence that that playerslot was Mist

[D3f3nd3r]

(Also to be abundantly clear I'm only saying that the additional issues with players picking their hydras are not competitive balance related, I do wholeheartedly believe that in general hydras do have a competitive advantage as I made abundantly clear in the rest of my posts in this thread.)

[D3f3nd3r]

Why are we talking about ID'ing players as if this is a thing that should be weighing into how people play? Because it really shouldn't be.

In an ideal world sure, but people are going to let them affect their game subconsciously and there really isn’t a ton that can be done about that.

[D3f3nd3r]

Uh anyways my opinion as one member of the hydra in Pantheon that was the least hydra-ey hydra: Just having someone take over every second challenge gave me huge peace of mind. Just days that I could take as a break from Survivor and then come back refreshed for PMing because I wasn't spending the first week of the game playing a board game or two hours cursing Baba Yaga's name. Of course it was an advantage. The hardest thing about Survivor is it takes so much time investment and you have two people's time blocks to work with. In my opinion the winning hydra obviously benefitted from having two people pumping out FTC content as well whereas the other finalist had empty timezones where he was, shock, busy.

TBH I don't know why Pantheon is being used as an example of why its a problem though: Pantheon was a Bastard Game. There was one Hydra on each starting tribe so it was like "representative player for the Tribe with massive advantage twist here". Maybe don't take the player with the massive advantage to the end? Regardless I agree hydras should be used as coaching experiences and people should not pick each other when hydras are allowed, because struggling players don't always know they're the ones that need help. It's something the mods should judge and decide. Run more games like Survivor Legendary with EXP tribe vs Newbie tribe with Coaches.

Both games with hydras implemented this way have been complex, but what sets them aside from previous hydra implementations is how they were presented - as a feature, not as a twist. When you list weird twists from, say, Arkham, you’re going to (probably?) talk about the hydra. When you do that here, you probably aren’t.

[D3f3nd3r]

I do think there's merit in asking whether the fun of having hydras in games justifies the imbalance though. My answer would be 'probably not', but I dunno, I don't have much stake in that argument.

PEdit: not read that last post yet but Shadow is probably right

To what extent would you consider games having hydras being especially “fun” for the players not in the hydras? The only line I can think of is “it’s fun because it lets more potentially-iconic people play that may not have been able to otherwise”.

(To be clear I’m not saying that it’s more unfun, it seems like the kind of thing that’s incredibly neutral.

[D3f3nd3r]

The thing to keep in mind about ID guessing is that a lot of people don’t put all of their ID guesses into the forum itself. I know that generally when I do play, they go in my Discord chat with the mods.