What's the best number for a merge?

For large social games such as Survivor where the primary mechanic is social interaction.
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Post Post #25 (ISO) » Fri Jan 26, 2018 5:44 pm

Post by Skelda »

I understand your points, however not making Jury sucks and the pain felt by the people who make the merge but not Jury outweighs the marginal benefit of finalists getting a few more rounds with Jurors. Plus no one thinks about voting out people they don't want on the Jury at the merge and even if people are it usually isn't known for sure that Jury hasn't started.

Making Jury is an accomplishment and when you don't make it that fucking sucks. Prejury people have my greatest sympathy, but I want as few people to deal with the pain of being prejury as possible.
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Post Post #26 (ISO) » Fri Jan 26, 2018 5:47 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

anywhere from 10-12 is the sweet spot, depending on playerlist size

could go 9 if 16 players though
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Post Post #27 (ISO) » Fri Jan 26, 2018 6:35 pm

Post by BROseidon »

12 or 10 for more rock potential without it being stupidly large
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Post Post #28 (ISO) » Fri Jan 26, 2018 7:33 pm

Post by Aronis »

In post 25, Skelda wrote:I understand your points, however not making Jury sucks and the pain felt by the people who make the merge but not Jury outweighs the marginal benefit of finalists getting a few more rounds with Jurors. Plus no one thinks about voting out people they don't want on the Jury at the merge and even if people are it usually isn't known for sure that Jury hasn't started.

Making Jury is an accomplishment and when you don't make it that fucking sucks. Prejury people have my greatest sympathy, but I want as few people to deal with the pain of being prejury as possible.
this doesn't make any sense. If you start having large amounts of people make the jury, which is the most obvious and effective way to limit the number of people and therefore the amount of pain of not being jury, you're just going to devalue making the jury to the point it's not a notable accomplishment. That's not even mentioning other negative impacts.
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Post Post #29 (ISO) » Sat Jan 27, 2018 6:35 am

Post by hiplop »

In post 25, Skelda wrote:I understand your points, however not making Jury sucks and the pain felt by the people who make the merge but not Jury outweighs the marginal benefit of finalists getting a few more rounds with Jurors. Plus no one thinks about voting out people they don't want on the Jury at the merge and even if people are it usually isn't known for sure that Jury hasn't started.

Making Jury is an accomplishment and when you don't make it that fucking sucks. Prejury people have my greatest sympathy, but I want as few people to deal with the pain of being prejury as possible.
Its not an accomplishment when like everyone makes the jury
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Post Post #30 (ISO) » Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:33 am

Post by BROseidon »

Congratulations on making the jury it's a huge accomplishment in the game of Survivor.
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Post Post #31 (ISO) » Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:46 am

Post by D3f3nd3r »

Jury point should be at merge, unless it’s a very early merge (13, or 12 in some cases). My method of keeping jury sizes manageable is just by putting the merge later.
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Post Post #32 (ISO) » Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:27 am

Post by JaydragonKing »

I'm a fan of Survivor, so I thought it was when half the people minus one was gone? Like half of 20 plus one equals 11 when you merge.

And shouldn't the Jury nearly always be seven? I've seen multiple reality shows, and nearly 80% have seven as the jurors.

(This isn't counting when there are 3/4 teams, because then you have multiple times to merge and maybe if a team lost all but two members they get shuffled into the others and stuff.)
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Post Post #33 (ISO) » Sat Jan 27, 2018 4:00 pm

Post by racefan12 »

In post 12, Haschel Cedricson wrote:Jury at 11 is a good number because the players don't know if it's F2 with 9 jurors or F3 with 8 jurors.
this

which would make merge naturally at 12
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Post Post #34 (ISO) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:43 am

Post by Skelda »

In post 29, hiplop wrote:
In post 25, Skelda wrote:I understand your points, however not making Jury sucks and the pain felt by the people who make the merge but not Jury outweighs the marginal benefit of finalists getting a few more rounds with Jurors. Plus no one thinks about voting out people they don't want on the Jury at the merge and even if people are it usually isn't known for sure that Jury hasn't started.

Making Jury is an accomplishment and when you don't make it that fucking sucks. Prejury people have my greatest sympathy, but I want as few people to deal with the pain of being prejury as possible.
Its not an accomplishment when like everyone makes the jury
I don't buy this argument. I think to a new player or a player who hasn't made the Jury before, the difference between 11th place Jury and 13th place Jury is fairly marginal, but the difference between 11th place Jury and 13th place prejury is massive. I'm not saying that we have 16 or 17 person Juries because yeah, that does devalue the Jury to a certain extent. I also think being somewhat unpredictable about when Jury/merge will occur is also good, so obviously you can't always have massive Juries.

But in general, starting Jury as early as you can is better. I also think that if you let the premerge drag on too long good players are more likely to be swap-screwed.

Also having larger Juries is probably more likely to result in winners who we want to win because with lower numbers you are more likely to have wonky votecounts. Something like a 3-2-2 is more likely with a small Jury, especially when people were recently voted off and it still stings. Having people on the Jury with more perspective is a good thing.
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Post Post #35 (ISO) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:30 am

Post by xofelf »

I think it depends on the size of the game, larger games 11-12 is a good merge, but smaller games 9. I do think that jury needs to not start until merge so that everyone in the jury has some idea of all the finalists personally, even if it's not much. I do think that jury starting a round or two after merge is also acceptable. But really, I think it's per game. Some of our game mechanics support merges at different times from the norm.
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Post Post #36 (ISO) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:11 pm

Post by Chevre »

there's no "ideal". The goal should always be to at least slightly subvert the players' expectations.
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Post Post #37 (ISO) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:21 pm

Post by McMenno »

ye, like "bet they won't expect an f3 again"
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Post Post #38 (ISO) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:12 pm

Post by hiplop »

In post 34, Skelda wrote:I don't buy this argument. I think to a new player or a player who hasn't made the Jury before, the difference between 11th place Jury and 13th place Jury is fairly marginal, but the difference between 11th place Jury and 13th place prejury is massive. I'm not saying that we have 16 or 17 person Juries because yeah, that does devalue the Jury to a certain extent. I also think being somewhat unpredictable about when Jury/merge will occur is also good, so obviously you can't always have massive Juries.
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Post Post #39 (ISO) » Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:12 pm

Post by Shadoweh »

For everything being said here, the least controversial twists in Civivor was the last Terra Incognito member (redemption island twist) becoming the first jury member. People's take on it seemed to be having a fairly unbiased jury member was a good and different person to impress!
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Post Post #40 (ISO) » Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:35 am

Post by BROseidon »

Eh I was mildly miffed that it was someone I barely interacted with in the pre-merge but yeah that twist was pretty k.
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Post Post #41 (ISO) » Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:36 am

Post by D3f3nd3r »

Honestly I probably would have been a little bit upset if the other half of that twist hadn’t completely fucked me.
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Post Post #42 (ISO) » Tue Jan 30, 2018 10:09 am

Post by hiplop »

I think it was bad just the rest of stuff was more bad
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