1. making challenges viewable for the jury? Right now jury challenges are done in PM for the sake of authenticity. I'm open to changing this because I think the Jury has so few windows into seeing the current game that I'm not sure it really matters whether they are able to spectate the challenge or not. Obviously, I want to avoid situations where people still in are communicating with Jury members, but I don't really think that's a big issue. The change here would make it easier for spectators to follow + easier for hosts, at the cost of potentially losing the separation between Jury and contestants (although that said I think jurors lose interest so perhaps letting them see challenges will keep their interest?)
I think the bigger question here is "how to activate the jury?" and while making challenges viewable to the jury is an option, I don't think it's the only option by any means. In the show, I think the jury is activated in 3 main ways. 1) The jury gets special treatment/can live in a bit of luxury compared to how they lived during tribe life, 2) the jury gets to listen in on tribal councils, and 3) the the jury gets to talk to the last person voted out and roughly every 3 days gets new information on the social dynamics. Really the only one of these that has directly been translated into Smogon Survivor is the third option, but even then circus has a lag time so the information trickles in at a slower rate.
In CAP Survivor S1, I wanted to activate the jury by giving them a modified version of point number 1; giving them special treatment. Now, obviously special treatment in "quality of life" is not possible over the internet so instead I gave the jury an extra power that could affect the game. The season was a redemption island season so the jury knew that they had some way to get back into the game, which was independent from any powers of the players left in the game. The "special treatment" that resulted was that the jury had more control and gained knowledge sooner on how the post merge redemption island stuff would work. If the jury members think they have a chance to still get back into the game, then the jury is less likely to lose interest. As a note, the post-merge redemption island stuff worked in the jury itself rather than having eliminated players go to a separate island and only go to the jury after losing a challenge. A certain point into the merge, the jury just had the ability to vote one of their own back into the game... maybe not as exciting as competing in challenges, but well generated jury discussion all the same.
In CAP Survivor S2, I was incredibly set on getting the game done in 39 days and so I knew I didn't want to do another redemption island. However, I still wanted the jury to be engaged. Ultimately I decided on a way of trying to tackle point 2. In the show, the jury gets to to listen in on tribal councils but can't communicate back, but it's still a great way to get information. In Smogon Survivor, there is no live tribal council because getting everyone online at the same time is not realistic. So instead I aimed to create a feeling of that information exchange that would let the jury be able to hear what some players were actually thinking without letting the jury the ability to talk back. Ultimately what I decided on was an "advantage" called Shibe Mail in which several players still in the game gained the ability to mail a letter to a member of the jury (and the multiple winners of this advantage could choose when to send the letter). The jury member couldn't ever respond back but could share it with fellow jury members. Overall the impact of the jury mail wasn't huge but when a piece of mail was sent to the jury, I definitely noticed spikes of discussion in the jury house. So, I think having a mix of the jury mail and the faster eliminations were still able to keep CAP S2's jury activated without me having to resort to redemption island.
Lastly, in both s1 and s2 there was a "make a pokemon challenge" and the Jury had voting power in at least partially deciding the winner of the challenge. Submissions of created Pokemon were stripped of the author's name so that the jury wouldn't know the player's name they were voting to win, helping it become less of letting the jury pick their favorite person (s2 some jury members were able to find out a language pattern difference though but luckily in s2 the judge pool had non jury members that balanced it out).
2. how to speed up the game? Heal's Survivor has done a great job of completing the game in a timely fashion. The issue with Survivor III is that it clearly dragged on way to long which hurt people's motivation. Activity becomes a larger issue especially since people might be unable to commit to being active for 2+ months. I don't have any real solutions because there needs to be a fine line between getting challenges done + giving time for people to talk with others. I don't expect people to be on 24/7 and I want to respect people's time + allow for less active players to participate. My only thought is better deadline administration alongside thoughtful challenges that don't go on forever (e.g. the voltorb flip challenge than took approximately one month lol).
3. more engaging challenges? I think this is a given. A lot of challenges have the same format with regards to battling. I want to shake things up and create challenges that still primarily involve battling but in a way that is more complicated than just "team x wins majority of battles." I have a couple ideas but if anyone has any interesting stuff would love to hear it. I know some people have suggested team challenges that allow better players to perform and "carry." While obviously not every challenge should be like that, I want to include some challenges of that nature (while still involving some level of participation). So yea hit me with any ideas you got.
3b. how to make good non-pokemon challenges? This is a follow up from above. Obviously, genius game and Bass games come to mind when it comes to solid non-pokemon challenges that could be used. Especially when it comes to individual stuff, it's very difficult to have challenges that are fair in the sense that you can't just gang up on one person. I suppose I will have to look to genius + heal's game + bass games for ideas for non-pokemon challenges, but my general sense is that it would be nice to shake things up every now and then by having a more logic based challenge over all pokemon which I think gets stale after a while.
I'm lumping Jalmonts 2 and 3 together because I think the key is obtaining a balance between fast and engaging challenges. Circus S3 suffered from having challenges that were just overly complicated. Even if they were mentally engaging, they were not ones that were feasible to do not-in-real-time in a timely manner. MANY Genius-style games are quite complicated and take several hours to be filmed and completed even when all the players are together in the same space. They are really cool games often but I think Smogon Survivor challenges need to ones that are not only engaging but also feasible to complete within a few days because even when a few days is feasible there's going to be lag time that makes it longer. A few genius-style games can work for survivor, but most just take too long.
CAP Survivor at its core was focused on CAP stuff so a greater battle focus was present but I still really wanted to have variety. The variety picked up was roughly a pattern of "standard/semi standard battle format", "unstandard CAP battle format", "Trivia/Tests/Word Puzzles." Furthermore both seasons of CAP survivor had a "make a Pokemon" challenge and a "CAP Auction" that worked like the Survivor show's food auction except people bid on mons to be available in a tournament. CAP Survivor S2 I also was more prone to branching away from CAP for a few challenges and the "Running Fence" was something that I really enjoyed translating into an online game.
Since I'm literally making my summer game TV show thingy (as seen here in office of strategic influence) for a serious art project, my view on challenges is a weird mix of the social challenges seen in Survivor/The Genius Game and of uhhh performative or generative/process-based artworks. I look at both existing challenges in similar shows but I also look at artworks from the 1960s until now that deal with social and spatial engagement and think of ways to incorporate them into online, game-like equivalents or how to use them as an inspiration to come up with something new. Marina Abramovic, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Lygia Clark, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Allan Wexler, Santiago Sierra, Evan Roth... There are many professional visual artists that are engaging in social relationships in ways that I find are extremely applicable to Survivor. One of the core aspects about Survivor is the social politicking and many of the pre-merge immunity/rewards and post-merge rewards challenges deal with these social, cooperative tasks (and while most post merge immunity challenges are more individual than social, a few do cross the line into social as well).
So, when it comes to survivor challenges, I ask myself 1) can it be completed in a few days, 2) is it socially engaging or individually rewarding, and 3) is there some sort of greater, almost artistic message with the challenge? If you can answer yes to at least 2 of the 3, then I think it's probably a good challenge. 3 might be the hardest to reach, but it's still definitely there in my mind at least but maybe that's just my background.
Twists: I personally do not like twists that take agency away from players. However, I think more twists may be necessary to keep the game interesting, especially since the social dynamic is more difficult online - I'm thinking a twist every vote-out, whether it's something super minor or not. Just something to keep players on their toes. I'm curious how people feel about this/suggestions for twists. I have a system that I like for Hidden Immunity Idols that I think will be more engaging than riddles as well that sort of incorporates a mafia-like element. I'm going to keep that secret for now though :D
Twists will probably always have some level of controversy. Do the twists just make the game less boring as an unrelated addition, do they work in harmony with the core goal of the game, are they more favorable to some players and less to others? Almost any twist that is done will have some people heavily dislike it because it messes with a formula, but at the same time sometimes the formula of social games are supposed to be in flux in order to create new and worthwhile explorations and experiences... Personally a twist every vote-out seems very excessive to me, but really I have no idea what the twist you're actually referring to is so it's hard to judge. So I guess I'll just say that personally I'm very fine with twists but I want every twist to be in some way in harmony with the nature of the game itself and not just additions to make things more exciting.
In regards to idols, I think they're fine. I'm prolly biased though since I'm the first one who put them into a smogon survivor game and because I earned one and used it to screw another player out of the game in circus s3... The method that idols are found could be changed though. Obviously actually saying publically what those methods are would ruin s4 though. CAP S1 used pretty much only scavenger hunt style idols, Circus S3 was just a series of riddles, CAP S2 idols were a mix of scavenger hunts, riddles, visual puzzles, and uh awareness of one's virtual surrounding.
