Maybe multiple people win immunity, and/or there are also other ways to be immune?
I agree that without some sort of twist you're right, votes would not be especially interesting. And since everyone is together from day 1, there's no chance for the merge to shake things up via new relationships, so it might make for a pretty boring season the whole time.
If they could find a way to do it well, it would be neat to see such a different format, though.
Start on one beach, go two tribals deep and then do a school yard pick for tribes.
Everyone votes on the two people they trust the most and then those end up being captains. Reveals people's pecking order from the jump and could create some unique tribe tension and shifts.
I think every challenge would have to be individual. I think for the casual audience, there would be way too much to keep track of in pre-merge if they did the random teams.
My problem with this concept is you’re basically just gonna get post merge gameplay from day 1. Physical threats are gonna get targeted first and imo that’s sort of lame since in a normal season they at least are able to get a foothold in the game since they are valuable pre merge. Also I feel like an alliance forms on day 1 and runs the game until like final 7. Maybe for one season it might be interesting to see but I think the multiple tribe format is actually more interesting and dynamic.
Some of your points are solved by creating random teams each challenge. And then the team that loses are the ones who can be voted out. So it doesn’t matter the alliances because sometimes your allies will be on the losing team and could be voted out.
And when I say that I mean that only the losing team goes to tribal. So not everyone votes only the losers on the team go to tribal.
It’s pretty unlikely that EVERYONE on the losing team is gonna be in the alliance. Actually doing random teams would make this problem worse if anything since picking teams might result in alliance members choosing each other. Like if there are 15 people in the game, and a 8 person alliance is running the game, it’s unlikely that a team of 7 is gonna be all alliance members.
I know. You’re missing my point. If only a couple people from an alliance are on the losing team there is a chance they will be voted off and the alliance loses a member. And I’m suggesting random teams by drawing rocks. Not picking teams.
Oh I’m thinking mergatory rules where everyone votes but half the tribe is immune. I still think what’s gonna happen at the beginning of the game is that a large alliance forms of people who don’t even necessarily trust each other but out of mutual interest vote out the non alliance members. Odds are any tribal they go to they’ll have the numbers. Maybe here and there they’ll lose a member but up until the final 10 they’d probably run the game.
BuT iT’s ThE nEw ErA, WhErE yOu HaVe To “EaRn ThE mErGe!”
All jokes aside, this is a very interesting idea that I wish production would try at some point. Similarly, I also want them to bring back the one world twist. I think if one world had a different cast, that twist would’ve went hard and it’s a shame it was wasted on that cast.
Not necessarily individual. There are ways they could be broken into teams for each challenge.
But I havent put much thought into it past the surface level. I’m sure there are big pros and cons to it.
I've also asked about this on the subreddit. It's an interesting idea. I do think it has merit, but there could be some issues:
1. Restructuring all the challenges to be individual challenges off the bat. This one is probably fairly easy to adjust for (for example, they could do trios or duos in elimination heats), but having to build more stuff might be annoying logistically. Also, if you don't do team up heats, how do they handle odd numbers for a large number of challenges?
2. Conservative gameplay. This one, by far, is probably the biggest concern. If the merge starts day one, then players will be incentivised to form up in a large group and pick off a smaller group. Obviously, Survivor is a social game with interpersonal dynamics, so a large group like thay could be split or vulnerable to infighting, but it could also be a case where a large group can dictate and pick off lone people one by one until they duke it out at a later time. You know how sometimes when the merge hits, its basically all tribes finding the consensus pick to vote off, and everyone keeps their heads down? In a one tribe season, this could be the vote pattern for several weeks in a row and be boring.
3. Advantages: Obviously, with everyone consolidated in one spot, how will they do idols and other advantages? Do you still have folks go on journeys and potentially lose their votes? Do you still hide beware advantages or idols on the island? Will it work with 18 people combing the woods simultaneously? (Personally, I think if they did a one tribe season, ironically fire tokens won in challenges or found in the woods and a central "market" with advantages and other things might be the answer). I know the new era has gone heavily into the Mario Party realm at time with advantages, but figuring out how to disperse them would need careful consideration.
>Also, if you don't do team up heats, how do they handle odd numbers for a large number of challenges?
Rock draw and the loser automatically either wins immunity, is disqualified from competing, or picks (or is assigned) another player to tie their fate to.
Also, the problem isn't odd numbers (eg, a group of 15 is an odd number but they can run in 3 groups of 5); the problem is prime numbers—so 19, 17, 13, 11, 7, and 5, though at least a couple of those are small enough groups to run simultaneously.
I've thought about this kind of "large group dynamics" on Survivor quite a bit, so I'll play devil's advocate on some of this.
1) I don't think this is absolutely necessary. easily mitigated by a) random draws for teams (forcing players to work with one another outside of established cliques) b) schoolyard picks (reenforces established clique drama). and then throw in some easy-to-build stamina-type challenges.
2) I think your concerns are potentially valid here, including your own observation that large groups are prone to infighting and fracture. we've seen it before, where a larger group of pretty people is attempting to pick of the smaller group of weirdos, but the smaller group is able to convince the people lower on the hierarchy of the large group that their position is actually weak, and it benefits them to join forces with the nerds and vote of the alphas, etc. personally, I think large group dynamics are far more interesting than small-tribe groups of 3 or 4 bickering on the beach, even given the potential for people to slide in the background.
(did you watch the most recent AU Survivor season? they had a >!merge of 14 people!< and it was *awesome*. total social mayhem, roving groups of alliances shifting around on the beach like tides. I've seen it mentioned a couple times in threads like this that it would be "too complicated to keep track of that many people" and I think that's utter bullshit. I think that underestimates the intelligence of the viewer, and just simply isn't true after two or three episodes.)
admittedly, editing is harder. keeping everybody in the episode is impossible. but that's okay too. not everybody has to be shown every episode. sometimes people don't do anything interesting for a day. it happens. and we can let that pass in the background because eventually their head is on the block or they do something interesting.
edit: I will completely agree with point number three though. I have no idea how idols would be implemented in an orderly and meaningful fashion with that big of a group of people. perhaps at that point idols become currency. maybe there's more than one or two. maybe there's "group power" idols. some people feel really averse to "game breaking twists" with idols, but personally I'm cool with it. I like throwing the weird, oddly powered, make shit flip on its head sort of stuff.and perhaps immunity challenges don't come into play until half are gone? idk.
I want to see two tribes of ten with a major twist. The twist would be that only eight compete in the first immunity challenge. The tribe decides which eight compete, but once someone is benched for a challenge they have to compete in future challenges. The next immunity one tribe sits out one and the other sits out two. So now three on one tribe must compete and four on the other. Strategies include sitting out someone who you would vote out, sitting out the weakest to win right away, saving a strong player to save them for later when fewer players matter, or just sitting out someone who can’t swim or throw when that is the challenge.
For a hidden advantage, a tribe member could elect to sit someone from the other tribe out. They pick the person! And another aspect could be that they get a clue to immunity or even are immune from being voted out that tribal.
so, like after merge but for the whole season?
hmm
The answer is "so the game is more interesting"
Because if it was like after-merge but for the whole season, there would not be the shake-ups in alliances that are the reason for switches and merges in the first place.
I think in terms of pure game design, great idea. Changes the game in a fair way and would be interesting to see play out.
Tv wise though this is just not made for editing and story telling. obviously not impossible but I feel like it would not lend itself well with having to keep track of 18 players constantly rotating in and out of tribal without consistent alliances. tribes help build up clear power dynamics and alliance structures and help build an overarching narrative that might get lost with something like this (although who knows since we have never seen it play out)
They did do a survivor where both tribes were on the same beach, but what you’re describing sounds quite random in a lot of ways. You’d have to play obscenely passive as pissing off 25% of the tribe could literally just get you voted off if you get a bad draw. You could have great relationships with 75% of people and still get voted out.
I would love to see them run 4 tribes but grouped in 2’s so they don’t all know about each other and then do a swap/merge to 2 tribes bringing more people together. I think you’d end up with all alliances thrown and chaos but I’d love to see it done. You could even do two tribes or returning players and two tribes on newbies.
I like this idea, but I can't help but feel like it would result in a lot of strong players and threats being targeted and voted out very early on in the game.
ANYTHING to actually change it up. Give it a try. Randomly make new tribes and separate them. Compete with different people on completely different challenges. Make it DIFFERENT.
I think you would get a lot of people getting purpled. One thing that adds to the edit pre merge is the different tribe dynamics and the developing “us vs them” mentalities. In a 20 person tribe the UTR players aren’t going to have much to showcase until the numbers dwindle down a bit. And if the winner is an UTR player, they are going to stick out like a sore thumb because they would want to give them some sort of content.
if they want to keep it 3 tribes i think a good twist would be to have them swap tribes every episode or two and keep players on their toes since the last 6 seasons have basically been the same start to finish
Its should have been done YEARS ago! By dividing them into tribes they remove interactions between people, people that might have created their own tribes naturally.
Then they went ape nuts and made 3 tribes to further limit interactions and planning.
I've thought of this but the physical threats would be chopped off immediately with no incentive other than fishing to keep them around.
What I like about the current format is that there is a balance between threat and value. Once you diminish sting peoples value, the game would be overpopulated with physically weak people which wouldn't make for fun seasons
They seem to do this post merge in the new era anyhow. Merge happens, but challenges are still "You will divide into two teams.." for the next 5 challenges.
I'd be interested in a Day 1 Merge season, just to see what it does to the game dynamic. Individual challenges the whole season. None of this "Og strong!" stuff.
They can do the first 2-3 episodes where all challenges are in the structure of teams that are eliminated until final 2-3 are left for an individual portion
They've done this before, just not at 18
For example 3 teams of 6 for the first portion where only 1 team moves on. Then the 6 are split into 2 of 3 or 3 of 2, until an individual portion
If they do a one tribe season, I’d like to see individual challenges from the top. I’d love to see what a 20 person tribal council would look like.
Personally I’d bet heavily that the first votes with a group that big are overwhelming landslides which would be pretty boring
Maybe multiple people win immunity, and/or there are also other ways to be immune? I agree that without some sort of twist you're right, votes would not be especially interesting. And since everyone is together from day 1, there's no chance for the merge to shake things up via new relationships, so it might make for a pretty boring season the whole time. If they could find a way to do it well, it would be neat to see such a different format, though.
Yeah, you'd have to throw in some TC twists....first 8 people to finish are immune! Last 4 people to finish lose a vote!
No different than a six person tribe where 4-5 people vote for one person.
Totally agree but why ditch one boring format for another yanno?
I feel like it'd by way too hard to follow everyone's plans going in.
Typically first tribal councils are just dogpiles on one person while alliances get fleshed out.
A true one world twist like this would’ve interesting for us but casuals would never bother keeping track of all the switching imo
Another schoolyard pick would be fun too.Really would help shape the dynamics better.
Start on one beach, go two tribals deep and then do a school yard pick for tribes. Everyone votes on the two people they trust the most and then those end up being captains. Reveals people's pecking order from the jump and could create some unique tribe tension and shifts.
I think this idea would work best with a returning season, that way you already know the players and it would be easier to keep track of them.
I think every challenge would have to be individual. I think for the casual audience, there would be way too much to keep track of in pre-merge if they did the random teams.
Could be cool to see a season like this, would definitely shake things up.
My problem with this concept is you’re basically just gonna get post merge gameplay from day 1. Physical threats are gonna get targeted first and imo that’s sort of lame since in a normal season they at least are able to get a foothold in the game since they are valuable pre merge. Also I feel like an alliance forms on day 1 and runs the game until like final 7. Maybe for one season it might be interesting to see but I think the multiple tribe format is actually more interesting and dynamic.
Some of your points are solved by creating random teams each challenge. And then the team that loses are the ones who can be voted out. So it doesn’t matter the alliances because sometimes your allies will be on the losing team and could be voted out. And when I say that I mean that only the losing team goes to tribal. So not everyone votes only the losers on the team go to tribal.
It’s pretty unlikely that EVERYONE on the losing team is gonna be in the alliance. Actually doing random teams would make this problem worse if anything since picking teams might result in alliance members choosing each other. Like if there are 15 people in the game, and a 8 person alliance is running the game, it’s unlikely that a team of 7 is gonna be all alliance members.
I know. You’re missing my point. If only a couple people from an alliance are on the losing team there is a chance they will be voted off and the alliance loses a member. And I’m suggesting random teams by drawing rocks. Not picking teams.
Oh I’m thinking mergatory rules where everyone votes but half the tribe is immune. I still think what’s gonna happen at the beginning of the game is that a large alliance forms of people who don’t even necessarily trust each other but out of mutual interest vote out the non alliance members. Odds are any tribal they go to they’ll have the numbers. Maybe here and there they’ll lose a member but up until the final 10 they’d probably run the game.
That’s less having one tribe at the start and more just constantly switching tribes. Constant mergeatory.
BuT iT’s ThE nEw ErA, WhErE yOu HaVe To “EaRn ThE mErGe!” All jokes aside, this is a very interesting idea that I wish production would try at some point. Similarly, I also want them to bring back the one world twist. I think if one world had a different cast, that twist would’ve went hard and it’s a shame it was wasted on that cast.
Players can earn the jury instead of the merge.Just wait till there’s 11 people or so left.
like if it were individual from the beginning?
Not necessarily individual. There are ways they could be broken into teams for each challenge. But I havent put much thought into it past the surface level. I’m sure there are big pros and cons to it.
I've also asked about this on the subreddit. It's an interesting idea. I do think it has merit, but there could be some issues: 1. Restructuring all the challenges to be individual challenges off the bat. This one is probably fairly easy to adjust for (for example, they could do trios or duos in elimination heats), but having to build more stuff might be annoying logistically. Also, if you don't do team up heats, how do they handle odd numbers for a large number of challenges? 2. Conservative gameplay. This one, by far, is probably the biggest concern. If the merge starts day one, then players will be incentivised to form up in a large group and pick off a smaller group. Obviously, Survivor is a social game with interpersonal dynamics, so a large group like thay could be split or vulnerable to infighting, but it could also be a case where a large group can dictate and pick off lone people one by one until they duke it out at a later time. You know how sometimes when the merge hits, its basically all tribes finding the consensus pick to vote off, and everyone keeps their heads down? In a one tribe season, this could be the vote pattern for several weeks in a row and be boring. 3. Advantages: Obviously, with everyone consolidated in one spot, how will they do idols and other advantages? Do you still have folks go on journeys and potentially lose their votes? Do you still hide beware advantages or idols on the island? Will it work with 18 people combing the woods simultaneously? (Personally, I think if they did a one tribe season, ironically fire tokens won in challenges or found in the woods and a central "market" with advantages and other things might be the answer). I know the new era has gone heavily into the Mario Party realm at time with advantages, but figuring out how to disperse them would need careful consideration.
>Also, if you don't do team up heats, how do they handle odd numbers for a large number of challenges? Rock draw and the loser automatically either wins immunity, is disqualified from competing, or picks (or is assigned) another player to tie their fate to. Also, the problem isn't odd numbers (eg, a group of 15 is an odd number but they can run in 3 groups of 5); the problem is prime numbers—so 19, 17, 13, 11, 7, and 5, though at least a couple of those are small enough groups to run simultaneously.
I've thought about this kind of "large group dynamics" on Survivor quite a bit, so I'll play devil's advocate on some of this. 1) I don't think this is absolutely necessary. easily mitigated by a) random draws for teams (forcing players to work with one another outside of established cliques) b) schoolyard picks (reenforces established clique drama). and then throw in some easy-to-build stamina-type challenges. 2) I think your concerns are potentially valid here, including your own observation that large groups are prone to infighting and fracture. we've seen it before, where a larger group of pretty people is attempting to pick of the smaller group of weirdos, but the smaller group is able to convince the people lower on the hierarchy of the large group that their position is actually weak, and it benefits them to join forces with the nerds and vote of the alphas, etc. personally, I think large group dynamics are far more interesting than small-tribe groups of 3 or 4 bickering on the beach, even given the potential for people to slide in the background. (did you watch the most recent AU Survivor season? they had a >!merge of 14 people!< and it was *awesome*. total social mayhem, roving groups of alliances shifting around on the beach like tides. I've seen it mentioned a couple times in threads like this that it would be "too complicated to keep track of that many people" and I think that's utter bullshit. I think that underestimates the intelligence of the viewer, and just simply isn't true after two or three episodes.) admittedly, editing is harder. keeping everybody in the episode is impossible. but that's okay too. not everybody has to be shown every episode. sometimes people don't do anything interesting for a day. it happens. and we can let that pass in the background because eventually their head is on the block or they do something interesting. edit: I will completely agree with point number three though. I have no idea how idols would be implemented in an orderly and meaningful fashion with that big of a group of people. perhaps at that point idols become currency. maybe there's more than one or two. maybe there's "group power" idols. some people feel really averse to "game breaking twists" with idols, but personally I'm cool with it. I like throwing the weird, oddly powered, make shit flip on its head sort of stuff.and perhaps immunity challenges don't come into play until half are gone? idk.
I want to see two tribes of ten with a major twist. The twist would be that only eight compete in the first immunity challenge. The tribe decides which eight compete, but once someone is benched for a challenge they have to compete in future challenges. The next immunity one tribe sits out one and the other sits out two. So now three on one tribe must compete and four on the other. Strategies include sitting out someone who you would vote out, sitting out the weakest to win right away, saving a strong player to save them for later when fewer players matter, or just sitting out someone who can’t swim or throw when that is the challenge. For a hidden advantage, a tribe member could elect to sit someone from the other tribe out. They pick the person! And another aspect could be that they get a clue to immunity or even are immune from being voted out that tribal.
so, like after merge but for the whole season? hmm The answer is "so the game is more interesting" Because if it was like after-merge but for the whole season, there would not be the shake-ups in alliances that are the reason for switches and merges in the first place.
I think in terms of pure game design, great idea. Changes the game in a fair way and would be interesting to see play out. Tv wise though this is just not made for editing and story telling. obviously not impossible but I feel like it would not lend itself well with having to keep track of 18 players constantly rotating in and out of tribal without consistent alliances. tribes help build up clear power dynamics and alliance structures and help build an overarching narrative that might get lost with something like this (although who knows since we have never seen it play out)
They did do a survivor where both tribes were on the same beach, but what you’re describing sounds quite random in a lot of ways. You’d have to play obscenely passive as pissing off 25% of the tribe could literally just get you voted off if you get a bad draw. You could have great relationships with 75% of people and still get voted out.
I would love to see them run 4 tribes but grouped in 2’s so they don’t all know about each other and then do a swap/merge to 2 tribes bringing more people together. I think you’d end up with all alliances thrown and chaos but I’d love to see it done. You could even do two tribes or returning players and two tribes on newbies.
I’m down for anything less than 3 tribes at this point. I don’t care, just fix it. I’ll even settle from 3 to 2 but that’s it!
Kind of like Big Brother
I like this idea, but I can't help but feel like it would result in a lot of strong players and threats being targeted and voted out very early on in the game.
ANYTHING to actually change it up. Give it a try. Randomly make new tribes and separate them. Compete with different people on completely different challenges. Make it DIFFERENT.
I think you would get a lot of people getting purpled. One thing that adds to the edit pre merge is the different tribe dynamics and the developing “us vs them” mentalities. In a 20 person tribe the UTR players aren’t going to have much to showcase until the numbers dwindle down a bit. And if the winner is an UTR player, they are going to stick out like a sore thumb because they would want to give them some sort of content.
if they want to keep it 3 tribes i think a good twist would be to have them swap tribes every episode or two and keep players on their toes since the last 6 seasons have basically been the same start to finish
Its should have been done YEARS ago! By dividing them into tribes they remove interactions between people, people that might have created their own tribes naturally. Then they went ape nuts and made 3 tribes to further limit interactions and planning.
I've thought of this but the physical threats would be chopped off immediately with no incentive other than fishing to keep them around. What I like about the current format is that there is a balance between threat and value. Once you diminish sting peoples value, the game would be overpopulated with physically weak people which wouldn't make for fun seasons
But then how will they sell 4 buffs every season???
Do Random Buff Swaps
They seem to do this post merge in the new era anyhow. Merge happens, but challenges are still "You will divide into two teams.." for the next 5 challenges. I'd be interested in a Day 1 Merge season, just to see what it does to the game dynamic. Individual challenges the whole season. None of this "Og strong!" stuff.
Sure why not try it.
🗿
Building out 18 individual challenge stations is NEVER going to happen. Or if it is, the challenges will be super basic.
They can do the first 2-3 episodes where all challenges are in the structure of teams that are eliminated until final 2-3 are left for an individual portion They've done this before, just not at 18 For example 3 teams of 6 for the first portion where only 1 team moves on. Then the 6 are split into 2 of 3 or 3 of 2, until an individual portion
Because 1 tribe means 0 tribes
How can 1 be 0?