Let's Study Games - Final Tribal Council

[Drench]

it doesn't move mountains but it's something

[Drench]

it's like, as i said in #11, it depends on the circumstances. but i do think that you will have slightly more challenge flavour if you have a f2 vis a vis a f3, if that's what you want. it won't radically change things up on average (although you could imagine a challenge run argument may have significantly more weight if in a f2 environment—or significantly less weight, jury dependent, but that's just a guess and really relies on what happens during the game itself, not what happens in its design)

[Shrek]

does anyone actually like the social strategic structural format? assigning arbitrary qualifiers for what player deserves a win is against the spirit of survivor. jurors should be able to vote based on whatever they want

[Cephrir]

for my next game I'm going to use snake/rat/kitten

[CaptainMeme]

howler monkey/stingray/dead fish

[Skelda]

Structural is 100% dead fish.

[D3f3nd3r]

for my next game I'm going to use snake/rat/kitten

I think we’ve had enough Snakes in FTCs tbh

[D3f3nd3r]

More seriously I keep finding myself hoping that Haschel’s insistence on his FTC triangle for jury questioning is primarily a way to try and reduce toxicity in FTCs

[Silverclaw]

I have no issues with the triangle and find the insistence on the triangle being bad to be a meme because I don't understand the hate people have for structural. Is using game mechanics and items to your advantage bad? Does there not deserve a place to talk about it?

[Cephrir]

i think it's more that people object to the idea that it deserves as much focus as the other two

i think i'm in the camp of not telling juries what to base their vote on at all, but i get it

[Silverclaw]

i think it's more that people object to the idea that it deserves as much focus as the other two

... so we're not allowed a thread to discuss it in? That seems like a bad argument. Like, what?

At the end of the day, the threads exist but the juries will decide what they want to vote on.

[Cheery Dog]

I don't hate on structural. I hate on having to categorise stuff.

[D3f3nd3r]

i think it's more that people object to the idea that it deserves as much focus as the other two

... so we're not allowed a thread to discuss it in? That seems like a bad argument. Like, what?

At the end of the day, the threads exist but the juries will decide what they want to vote on.

The argument is that the system we're complaining about shoehorns *all* discussion into one of those three topics. Versus organizing it by finalist or by juror to give more freedom in terms of what gets discussed.

[Silverclaw]

What would you want to talk about that isn't there?

[Cheery Dog]

The obligatory gif question.
It went missing from SotF, as I assume nobody could shoehorn it in.
Or it's just dropped out of fashion idk.

[Drench]

presenting categories inevitably leads people to think along those lines even if they reject a particular weighting. it also lends credence to the idea that a jury's vote should be entirely logical, which quite frankly undermines the entire point of survivor

[D3f3nd3r]

What would you want to talk about that isn't there?

Most questions jurors ask the finalists about the round they got voted out can't be answered explicitly in one of the three categories, for example. Also questions like finding a gif for each juror feel too jokey to fit into social.

[Drench]

my solution is that we shouldn't post any threads at all. jurors get free rein to do whatever. i will take no questions

[D3f3nd3r]

presenting categories inevitably leads people to think along those lines even if they reject a particular weighting. it also lends credence to the idea that a jury's vote should be entirely logical, which quite frankly undermines the entire point of survivor

co-signing this post

[Klick]

from a MOD/SPEC perspective, what are the advantages of a Final 2 or a Final 3? If you have modded your own games, why did you choose the FTC format that you did?

I'm a bit confused by the distinction of this question being from a mod/spec perspective. Maybe that's because I value player experience above mod/spec experience, especially since none of the mods/specs are going to be either finalists or jurors at an FTC. I think this question can't be objectively answered from a spec perspective, as different specs like watching different things. Some specs don't follow FTC at all, others are looking for something unexpected to happen, others are looking for something to learn from the process, etc. I think F2 vs F3 isn't that relevant of a question for specs directly. Similarly, it seems like mostly a personal preference thing for mods, when ignoring the players' perspective. I'm partial to F2s for the 'purity' argument that was brought up earlier - why stop Surviving early when there is still game to be played? It *feels* a bit more like the right ending to me - an epic duel between the last two Survivors (or Big Brotherers). And F3 FTCs have always felt like they've missed the balance of importance between FTCs and the rest of the game. Getting all the way to endgame in an F3 gives you a 1/3 shot of winning (on average obviously, not in practice). 50% feels like the right weight for FTC importance to me, not 67%.

But the people to whom this decision actually matters are:
- the favorite to win/biggest threat on the last round in an F2
- the person who would be most likely to lose at FTC in an F3

And I can see why both of these are hard burns. Getting to F3 as the favorite to win, only to stake the last two months on a 1/3 shot in a challenge that may have nothing to do with the rest of the game you've been playing... doesn't feel good. But that's going to be the nature of the game really due to challenges being a necessary part of the process. The best way to address that IMO is to make at least the last few challenges test skills that are somewhat related to the game itself. 24-hour endurance bonanza shouldn't be the barrier to entry to FTC after 2 months of playing hard.

I sympathize more with the player who enters FTC at F3 with low odds. They've really got it rough, from everyone. Usually they haven't played nearly as badly as the game winds up making them feel. Best-case is usually them losing the spotlight they've earned, getting largely ignored by the jury in favor of the other two options, while the specs chuck some nice words in their direction to soften the blow. But it tends to be a bit worse than that. There's something about appearing to be the *worst* option between three that opens up potential for unnecessary negativity. And the underdog would probably have a better chance at an upset if they only had to out-argue one opponent instead of two at once.

I don't think F2 vs F3 is the most important decision really though. They're both valid, I think F2 is probably a bit more fun for more people and it makes more sense to me. Variety between games is probably good here.

[Fluminator]

I like the idea of f3 immunity challenge being known for awhile so people can practice it so it's more of a "who wants it more" challenge.

[Drench]

have always found the bbcan approach of making part three of the final hoh entirely based on game events/knowledge really compelling, but i don't know how well that translates into a setting where you can keep records of game events fairly easily (unless of course people don't know it's coming—but that i think defeats the purpose by turning it from skill to a crapshoot, and you may have people preparing just in case anyway)

the bbus approach of juror statements is not good. that's not in issue here but i just wanted to make that statement

[Skelda]

What are the benefits of giving each Juror a thread at FTC vs giving each finalist a thread vs having all of FTC in one thread? Assuming that we don't want to divide Social/Strategic/Structural (or along any other lines), which do we find most useful?

As a finalist, I like having my own thread I think, but as a Juror, I also like having my own thread. But I could see how having separate threads for each Juror could make it harder for some people to follow what is happening.

[zoraster]

I've tended to gravitate to F3s in the past, but in truth I think both F2 and F3 are similar in how good they are for games IF players know what's coming or at least (such as RPG) know the process by which F2/3 is selected so they can plan their strategy around it.

---
I'm not sure how we got to the social strategic structural thing but I'm on the side that considers it a bad idea for a mod to do. I like when players come up with their own internal standards and rubrics. It's neat when Haschel questions me in FTC about it as a player, but imagine he were in a game that had different mod-given categories (say Loyalty, Big Moves, and Challenges) and then Haschel is going to have to swim upstream to get to how he wants to look at the game.

It's also probably bad for the site as a whole because it sorta enforces certain types of game styles that can fit into those little boxes. Fortunately I think Survivor as a base game overcomes that because players are generally going to vote for who they want anyway, but it's worth considering.

[Skelda]

RPG's approach to the F2/F3 situation was actually super creative and great. I really liked the way the firemaking challenge worked where we all knew it was coming and exactly what it was, and also the way we knew that it was probably an F3, but it could be an F2 under specific circumstances. Iirc for Lillian it was confirmed to be an F3 because she had an extra vote and therefore knew it couldn't be an F2 due to the number of points left, but for everyone else, right up until the F5 when Lillian's vote was played, it being an F2 was possible. This added an interesting element to Lillian's game where she could decide who (if anyone) to share that knowledge with and also potentially not to play her advantage in order to keep the information to herself.

I wouldn't be opposed to there being reward items which tell someone if it's an F2 or F3 if it isn't going to be announced the whole game. It could be a cool advantage.