should not
be done in Skype calls, and especially no decisions of any kind should take place without it having been presented and discussed on these boards where everyone can see. Otherwise, we're going to be excluding the majority of the community who have a right as any other person to have a say in this. This community is already suffering from its own cliques.Secondly, I don't believe any actual "review boarding" should officially be taking place until any idea has been given a green light, and a definition of what a review board is and what criteria they will be deciding upon is established. If we don't do this, then the reviewing of games are going to come down to one person's subjective opinion of how they believe they should review the games and in what way games should be judged, which is all too subjective. What you may think should qualify, might go against my own ideas and the majority of other people's opinions. It takes any meaning out of what is being discussed here.
Now onto the problem of Survivor games themselves. I don't see the problem Xof is highlighting in Survivor games. Not enough effort or caring put into the game? How so? What qualifies as effort and what qualifies as enough effort or giving up on caring? What games in particular are you talking about, or is it just Bahamas? Greece? Summertime? Arkham? I don't think "effort" or "caring" is what the problem is for most of these games. Bahamas itself I think mainly suffered from a game plan (2 tribes then to merge) which didn't give it as much of a competitive edge, a repeat of a challenge, and a community that went sour which then put an overcast on the rest of the game. I haven't been in or spectated a game where the issue came down to, "oh hey, they obviously had no challenge thought up here" or that anything was majorly delayed because some post wasn't already made, or the mods stopped caring. Neither did Bahamas.
Most issues stem from mod issues of not being on in time, not knowing how to work the boards properly, and either mod flaking or not having a co-mod or back-up mod available to pick up slack or help run the game more smoothly.
These are issues seen in Arkham, Summertime, and Greece. The other set of issues which was highlighted in Arkham, is whether the integrity of Survivor games themselves are being upheld.
Arkham had a mod account which had a pre-determined time to be executed and at least one challenge where the outcome was decided beforehand. That stuff should not be allowed to exist in a Survivor game.In general, I believe the main issues the community is having are games running smoothly, and on a lesser note, containing challenges some oomf put into them. Maybe it should be less of a review board, but putting down actual written standards about games themselves. Enforce a co-mod or two. A back-up mod. An active back-up mod. That is how you solve the issue of caring.
Regarding Xalxe's question, I think it would depend on the reviewer and mods themselves. I'd be more intrigued by a game from a new player reviewed by someone like Kloud, than a game ran by a regular mod reviewed by some old time regular. Nowadays, I'm more worried about getting into a game that will actually complete and in a timely manner though. For example, I would not have joined Amazing Race if it weren't both Xalxe and CC both running it. This is the area that needs the most attention.
Edited to refine my point.
