[Complex] Survivor: Pantheon [Congrats Mist and Noraa!]

[Noraa]

It wasn't super well liked

WHO DIDNT LIKE MY BABY MAZE?! >:c

well ... ig I didn't really like it until I get results but anyways

[Mist7676]

An additional thought I wanted to throw into the mix on challenges. I loved all the challenges in the game and thought they were super well varied and fun to play! It definitely felt like there was a deliberate effort to ensure no two challenges were similar, especially back to back.

With that said, this choice has an odd effect on hydras as the swapping off rule then lined up with the swapping off/breaking up of challenge types. What I mean specifically is I had to do all of the creative challenges (Scenes from a Dream/Tall Tale Contest/Five Golden Things) while Noraa was doing mainly puzzle/speed based challenges (Test of Thoth/Daedelus Made a Maze/Baba Yaga's Toilsome Trials/Labors of Hercules).

I know game design is meant to separate and vary the challenges to ensure no one player goes on a streak for a few rounds if they are, say, good at puzzles.... I guess this will come up less and less as it seems like we're moving away from hydras as a concept but considering hydra players were 25% of the players in the game, it is important to consider when designing.

[flow trap]

Pyramus and Thisbe
Really enjoyed this twist, enabled a lot of communication and people getting to know people on the other tribes, but with less numbers than a shipwreck so it wasn't extra overwhelming

Disagree, it basically screwed over the bottom person on whoever's tribe lost and gave everyone else a free pass; they didn't have to do anything and my whole team ghosted me except Kitsune who didn't really listen to me anyways

It may have enabled a lot of communication for everyone else, but I had to focus on trying to communicate with my tribemates because I knew I was the most in danger

This twist gave basically no room for redemption and it wasn't fun for me; I'd honestly rather have gone out round one due to being blindsided by my confidence than go out how I did trying to move a boulder with a toy fan, because then I feel like I could've learned more from my elimination

[Empire]

I think hard time limits for challenges should be a standard thing moving forward. It really sucked to lose the last and most important challenge of the game simply because Jesus had more time to spend on it than I did. I also think that challenges closer to the end of the game should receive the most playtesting/scrutiny as that is when immunity is most important.

Aside from Taskmaster and that last challenge, I thought most of the challenges were fine despite some issues like Puzzle B in that 7 puzzles challenge.

[VashtaNeurotic]

It really sucked to lose the last and most important challenge of the game simply because Jesus had more time to spend on it than I did.

I do have to ask what exactly you mean by the more time part. The way I read this would imply that we forced you to stop at deadline (since then your time alloted would be less than the time Jesus took to do the challenge), which we didn't, we told you to take as much time as you needed or until you decided your were done, should we have let the clock run out after the latter happened? If you mean continuous time, well, I'm not sure how much you spent continuously working on the challenge, but we do know that more than a third of Jesus' time was spent not working on the challenge, which is decent chunk of time, but still might make the continuous time available more than yours.

If you mean neither of those, what do you mean by Jesus won simply because he had more time to spend on it, and aside from putting a time cap on the challenge(which I agree should be standard) should we have done instead?

Ftr I do agree on the more playtesting for the last challenge, we thought it was good enough but with more testing (probably by releasing to the specs early) someone would have gotten stuck at the dials in the way before you two did, and even if a cap didn't occur, those other fixes probably would have happened.

[Empire]

I spent almost the entire 5 and a half hour time trying to figure out that puzzle (well, minus bathroom breaks of course). And I don't mean to imply that you guys cut me off. What I meant to say was that I started that challenge at 3 PM or so EST my time, 6 hours before the stated deadline, and I didn't set aside my entire evening to devote to the challenge because I was expecting it to take roughly the amount of time mentioned by the instructions (90 mins). I had things to do that evening so that was a large factor in my decision to end the challenge whereas it is obvious Jesus started long before I did and may have been fortunate enough to have the free time.

Aside from cutting both of us off, I am not sure that there was much you could have done but I do feel someone should have stepped in once Jesus passed the 3 hour mark. At that point it should have been obvious something was wrong. Ideally, both of us get cut off at some time around then and we move on to the tiebreaker.

[Mist7676]

Agreed on that point. There should be strict cutoffs. There's a reason we as a community moved away from the 24-hour endurance challenges of the past. I think the call the mods made at the time, i.e. let Jesus go on until he finished and give Hades the same amount of time if he wanted to take it was fair. There would be no way of knowing they both would get stuck at the same portion and Jesus going over time would end up giving him the win.

Aside from Taskmaster–

hey, gotta defend my only challenge win. I remember hearing out your issues with the challenge but want to reiterate what Vash said. It came down mostly to creative writing skills. I didn't purchase anything for the challenge, and actually took the photos and wrote the descriptions within an hour. I think that tests a different skillset from other challenges in the game and is an accessible challenge which is a wonderful goal to strive towards. We both lost out points because we just put a college degree If that wasn't showing that you didn't need an expensive item to win, I don't know what would. Hell, I swept the category of "Weirdest Item" with a crucifix simply because of the story associated with it. Even putting a limit on the words forced us all on an even playing field and didn't give whoever had the most time to write out a novel the win.

[CaptainMeme]

To be fair, I think it's quite easy to misjudge a challenge like that as a mod. It was the kind of puzzle that either clicks for you or doesn't, and if it clicked for all the playtesters then mods might miss that someone might just never get it.

Absolutely agree that challenges in general should have strict cutoffs built in though, precisely in case of things like that. It's certainly awkward for things like FIC since you *need* a victor, but in this case the game could probably have been divided into four - that way you could have a cutoff, with most sections complete as the objective and earliest submission of the final completed section as the tiebreak.

[Empire]

For Taskmaster, being able to buy stuff was only one issue I had. The other big issue was that the judging criteria was simply too vague. I even asked the mods to what extent the descriptions mattered, if at all, and the response I got was "however much the judges want it to matter" which was ??? Like, how am I even supposed to know what to do for this challenge if I don't even know what exactly the judges are basing their grading on?

All of the subjective challenges had this issue but I think Taskmaster was the worst offender for sure.

[Shadoweh]

The FIC was the only puzzle that didn't have a cutoff wasn't it? The other stuff had max 2 hours, but I imagine they didn't add a cutoff thinking it didn't Need one.. the lesson to learn is to always put a 1-2-3 hour cutoff Just In Case.

All of the "less communication" twists have the problem of making nothing happen essentially. If you can't talk you just do whatever you were doing before that. Pyramus and Thisbe was great for exactly everyone but Chaos. Maybe it should've ended early the way Tower of Babel did? Makes it less impactful but all I remember thinking was "thank fuck we aren't doing TC like this." Year of Two Winters did the same thing as it did in PvWvC where people couldn't talk to even discuss a move so moves didn't happen. IDK if there's ever a way this twist doesn't end that way. Maybe if you put people in 3 person boxes and let them move around every 12 hours like it was The Genius or something, there has to be more mixup to pass messages.

[VashtaNeurotic]

For Taskmaster, being able to buy stuff was only one issue I had. The other big issue was that the judging criteria was simply too vague. I even asked the mods to what extent the descriptions mattered, if at all, and the response I got was "however much the judges want it to matter" which was ??? Like, how am I even supposed to know what to do for this challenge if I don't even know what exactly the judges are basing their grading on?

All of the subjective challenges had this issue but I think Taskmaster was the worst offender for sure.

I mean that's why we had the judge profiles for later challenges. So you could get an idea of what the judges would value most, or try to think through what a reasonable person would find to be the weirdest item, etc. Perhaps creative challenges in the future should also give some rubric for the judges (I do seem to recall OLAAT from the last non-anon having 3 categories for the story written), but I do worry that will restrict the kinds of approaches people do, and you could still have the issue of "but what does x mean" with those categories. Some level of subjectivity is an inherent part of creative challenges, but I also find that creativity and humor are just as valid skills to test as doing a puzzle or board game, if somewhat harder to measure. I also don't see guessing what a judge will like more to be all that different from something like guesspionage where some of the questions were just about personal preferences of those polled, or guessing what a juror will value at ftc.

[VashtaNeurotic]

All of the "less communication" twists have the problem of making nothing happen essentially. If you can't talk you just do whatever you were doing before that. Pyramus and Thisbe was great for exactly everyone but Chaos. Maybe it should've ended early the way Tower of Babel did? Makes it less impactful but all I remember thinking was "thank fuck we aren't doing TC like this." Year of Two Winters did the same thing as it did in PvWvC where people couldn't talk to even discuss a move so moves didn't happen. IDK if there's ever a way this twist doesn't end that way. Maybe if you put people in 3 person boxes and let them move around every 12 hours like it was The Genius or something, there has to be more mixup to pass messages.

Yeah, perhaps ensuring all rounds it could happen had 48 hour challenges and suspending it for tribal council would have been the proper way to go. Looking back on it, any communication twist that persists into tribal council is going to just disadvantage to bottom of the game. I am curious how they would work out in a situation where there isn't an already established bottom, i.e a tribe swap or merge with no clear majority already in place.

[flow trap]

No matter what game I play, if there is a silencing mechanic, it will always negatively impact me the most

3 for 3, twice in game, once out of game because of it

[Aronis]

i really appreciated adding judge profiles for the creative challenges

i personally loved the pyramus and thisbe twist

the two winters one wasnt as fun but i feel like part of that was how the random list ended up being ordered and it was still kind of a nice break to have a chill tribal--i also feel like the way the tokens were set up was pretty good and at least gave players some freedom to limit the twists that were going to be hurtful to them

[Cephrir]

I don't see the forum linked anywhere here, so for anyone who happens upon this thread and is wondering what the hell we're talking about, here: https://survivor-pantheon.freeforums.net/

[Noraa]

I think they opened stuff up already, but I can beat them to the forum link: https://survivor-pantheon.freeforums.net/

I'd also put it into the links tab of the database, like I do all games.

>.<

[Cephrir]

it's hard when you are blind

[Noraa]

tis okie. bears are known to have blurry vision >.<
as a bear, I dont judge

[Malkon05]

Survivor: Pantheon

(this poll is missing one player who requested not to be included - it's not a mistake)

Here is the character of the year poll for this game. Be sure to get your voting in before the end of the year!