Oops, I totally messed up the jury votes in my chart...dingo didn't submit a vote, and Mary and Amerah were not on the jury.
Ok, so as I said earlier, I want to get some feedback on the twists and challenges of this season--and please be honest. A couple of questions, first off...
-Hosting style. Any significant issues anybody had? Namely, I want to make sure that everybody felt that the game was run smoothly and objectively. Any feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated.
-Challenge mix. Overall, do you think there was an appropriate balance of creative vs. trivia vs. puzzles? Non-live vs. live?
-Private forums for each tribe. Good idea? Bad idea? Did it enhance the game for you? Personally I like the format a lot because it gives us some more freedom in running challenges, but I know that some felt it may have made things less exciting.
-Overall take on the season, taking everything into account (challenges, cast, boot order, etc.). One of the best? Worst of all time? I personally would say top 3 but I'm sure some will disagree.
So now the big twists. I'll give my personal take on each one and I hope to hear from you guys too:
MIXING OLD AND NEW PLAYERS: My guess is that this is a necessity in the future given the pool of available contestants, but ultimately it's probably something that should be left up to the host of a given season. Unlike the real show, having "veterans" and "newbies" playing together doesn't seem to impact the dynamic, and I think this was probably the best cast ever, at least since season 1. Works for me.
RANDOMLY SELECTED TRIBES: Not a bad idea in theory, but didn't play out too well. Challenge-wise, I think the tribes were pretty balanced, at least on paper, but a lot of alliances were mapped out by luck of the draw. Plus, the nature of the first challenge almost guaranteed that the MIA FreakyGeeky's team would lose. Maybe a pick'em would've worked better.
KIDNAPPING: Short-term it made for some neat strategies and moments, definitely. I don't think it had much long-term impact. Could be repeated with some tweaks; I'd rather try out something else though.
MULTIPLE PEOPLE WINNING IMMUNITY: Three people won immunity at the first individual challenge. I'm sure that something similar was done in the past, but this one was significant because it spared the two most obvious targets. So I guess it was decent, albeit not a groundbreaking concept.
IMMUNITY CAN BE TRADED FOR CHALLENGE ADVANTAGE: Never came up.
Probably for the best because it would complicate things.
REMOVING INACTIVES: This is the biggest question mark of the season for me, because I didn't have a plan for it in advance and I had to make a call on the fly pretty much. It's something we definitely need to come up with an accepted rule for...you don't want inactive players outlasting everyone else because they aren't threats, but you don't want to disrupt anyone's strategy either. My suggestion in the future: the first time a player neglects to vote, it's a warning. After that, self-votes become cumulative and add up every single round. So basically, players in the minority can use that to their advantage, but it doesn't disrupt the schedule either.
I'll go through the challenges later...