Let's Study Games - Redemption Mechanics

[D3f3nd3r]

And finally, what is the alternative for new players who go home early? Gone are the days of there being a prejury forum in which eliminated players are forced to languish until the live reveal. We allow players who go home early to spectate now. In most instances, I would argue that spectating will be more valuable and more engaging for players than sitting on a Redemption Island for 5 rounds playing a halfhearted version of Survivor only to most likely not return anyway or to immediately go home again if they do.

This is a very good point.

I think your first paragraph is oversimplifying a bit, though. Dark Rey came very close to winning Barely Survivor. Both Star Sapphire and Abraham Lincoln had tangible impacts on Arkham City after returning at the merge, with the latter having a reasonable shot of winning the game if not for leaving at F5.

Considering that tris had already made an FTC before Barely Survivor, I wouldn't consider her a new player (which is what I was specifically talking about in my response). And I've already said that I think Barely Survivor is a bit of an outlier here and not really an example of what I'm talking about.

Arkham City was before my time unfortunately and I have no knowledge of it so I can't comment on that. But the fact that you're having to go that far back to find an example of this twist working is extremely revealing. This is a twist that has been tried quite a few times since I started playing in 2016, and it has very consistently flopped during that time. The juice is just not worth the squeeze on this one.

I know part of the problem with this is that we had very few games with returnees between Arkham City and recently. To the best of my knowledge, only seven games since then (summer 2015) have had returnees: Civilization, RtC, KSS, Equestria, PCW, Barely Survivor, and Of The Fittest. For comparison, it happened in nearly as many games in a ten-game span in 2011-2013 (Destiny Islands, Seafoam, Mass Effect, Arkham Asylum, and Greece). At some point tomorrow I'll go through site history and run through the actual returnee mechanic used in each game that's seen returnees.

Spoiler: List of Survivor games with returnees, to the best of my knowledge (40 total anonymous games in this timeframe)

Destiny Islands (Fall 2011)
Seafoam Islands (Winter 2012)
Mass Effect (Spring 2013)
Arkham Asylum (Summer 2013)

hi xof : )

Greece (Fall 2013)
Hogwarts (Summer 2014)
Doctor Who (Fall 2014)
Arkham City (Summer 2015)
Civilization (Summer 2017)
Reverse the Curse (Summer 2018)
Killing School Semester (Fall 2018)
Equestria (Spring 2019)
Power vs. Courage vs. Wisdom (Spring 2020)
Barely Survivor (Winter 2021)
Survivor Of The Fittest (Spring 2021)

EDIT: Equestria, Hogwarts, RtC, KSS, and Destiny Islands existed

[D3f3nd3r]

Conclave did not, but the other two did. Will add those to the list, sorry! I’m not looking to include non-Survivors on this list.

[D3f3nd3r]

Game	Game Time	Returnee Entry Time	Returnee Mechanic	Announced publicly?
Destiny Islands	Fall 2011	11/14; Unclear (I'll keep looking into this later)	The winner of a challenge between the eliminated players returned to the game; Unclear	No
Seafoam Islands	Winter 2012	Unclear	A group of eliminated players competed in a challenge against the living ones; if they won, they were allowed to vote one of their own back into the game.	No
Mass Effect	Spring 2013	Start of Merge	A special opt-in challenge occurred where the winner could choose any eliminated player to bring back (and the last-place player was eliminated).	No
Arkham Asylum	Fall 2011	Final 12 (two rounds into a fake Merge)	Living players voted for an eliminated player to bring back; the top two vote-getters returned to the game.	No
Greece	Fall 2013	F11 (one round into Merge) and F5	Standard Redemption Island.	Yes
Hogwarts	Summer 2014	Start of Merge	See Mass Effect, but the player choosing a returnee was the winner of a publicly announced item in an auction challenge.	No
Doctor Who	Fall 2014	Any time until the F4 Immunity challenge	Any player could return to a previous round of the game to alter their vote; by changing their vote to change the result of the TC, the eliminated player would return to the game.	Yes
Arkham City	Summer 2015	Final 10 (Pre-merge)	Rounds of Tribal Councils occurred among the eliminated players; the two remaining players returned to the game.	No
Civilization	Summer 2017	Start of Merge	See Arkham City. Additionally, the last non-returnee became a Juror.	No
Reverse the Curse	Summer 2018	Start of Merge	Standard Redemption Island.	Yes
Killing School Semester	Fall 2018	Final 19	The winner of a single challenge returned to the game.	No
Equestria	Spring 2019	Final 17	The six eliminated players competed in a challenge; the remaining players voted in one returnee from the top three.	Yes
Power vs. Courage vs. Wisdom	Spring 2020	Start of Merge and F8	Redemption Island; players that did not win the re-entry challenge at Merge were still eligible to return at F8. Two winners at Merge, one at F8.	No
Barely Survivor	Winter 2021	Final 12 (Hole); Final 8 (Flat)	Hole: Series of standard Survivor and Big Brother rounds (where the last eliminated player was HoH); six player remaining at F12 returned. Flat: Series of Immunity challenges where the winner got the sole vote to eliminate; the last round had one player eliminated by a living challenge winner and then they could drag another player.	No
Survivor of the Fittest	Spring 2021	Final 4	Edge of Extinction with occasional challenges and TCs; the winner of a final challenge returned to the game. Began with the player eliminated at F13.	No

Please let me know if there's anything incorrect here or if you remember how the Destiny/Seafoam Islands games' returnees worked!

[D3f3nd3r]

I would add fitness challenges from SotF.

Not having paid enough attention to the game to know for sure, would that also necessitate me adding this twist from TRTWIUAA to the list as a returnee function? Because from my cursory understanding of how the twist worked, it appears to have been the same as that one (albeit reframed).

[D3f3nd3r]

Various thoughts...

• Despite having some precautions built into it (ie. that the player replacing in needed to put in a bit of effort to get back in), the returnee in Mass Effect flaked after two rounds and ended up being modkilled for inactivity. I feel like this has inspired the more recent need to actually put a conscious effort into maintaining activity all game to replace back in.
  
• Red, Purple, Green had the potential for an Edge of Extinction returnee to come into the game - this would've been determined by having all eliminated players post every eight hours until a return challenge at the start of Merge, the winner of which would've returned to the game.
  
• I remember Greece having a lot of issues with inactivity among eliminated players (and I know this has happened in other games as well) that sort of killed the Redemption Island experience; I would like for games with returnees to do a good job ensuring that their returnee structures are relatively unimpacted by a few eliminated players flaking. Since you really can't blame them for doing so...that's why some people raise the flag on the Edge of Extinction IRL.
  
• The problem with "there's a chance for returnees, you need to expect the unexpected" is something that's easy to think about in practice, but in actuality it takes the process of Jury management and makes you start doing it immediately at the start of the game as opposed to when the Jury actually starts. This can be really, really exhausting to have to pull off, especially early in the game when you have more people to talk to. In any game where I know that there is the chance for a returnee, I effectively feel the need to make an effort to Jury manage from the get-go to avoid having a returnee come back into the game with a vendetta against me, like what happened in Civilization.
  
• A lot of us panned the original Edge season's twist of returning a player as late as it did, because they ended up going on to win the game. I definitely agree that players shouldn't have *that* easy of a trip to F5, but I'm not entirely sure whether or not SotF's twist of having the Edge start later in the game is sufficient in solving that. Maybe?
  
• And I'll piggyback on Zor's idea. As a moderator that likes giving the players as much information as possible as to the general structure of the game (ie. things like F2 vs. F3, overarching game twists, full player-by-player challenge results for individually-performed tribal challenges), I'd like to think that a returnee opportunity (especially one later in the game) is sufficiently big to announce with some notice.

I think I'd be happy with, as a solution, an explicit disclaimer made that Advanced/Complex games may have returnees in them without notice. And still specify that Vanilla/Standard games can announce beforehand that they have returnees (obviously making sure that this is done in a way that doesn't turn their games Advanced/Complex), or that Advanced/Complex games can explicitly declare that they don't have returnees if they so desire. I don't think explicitly banning returnees after a certain point is the right solution, since I'm sure there are things that can be thought of that would make it both legitimate and interesting to do a late returnee.

[D3f3nd3r]

also hey i was the returnee with a vendetta yay. i think survivor civ was what forced people to start using the classification system in the first place?

*waves* hi Rebecca!

[D3f3nd3r]

Looking at the “scoring” rules I think it’s vaguely a judgement call, but under my interpretation an unannounced returnee can’t happen in a Vanilla game. Maybe if it’s strictly a Redemption Island as implemented the first time it showed up in the actual show.

[D3f3nd3r]

@Vash Fixed!

[D3f3nd3r]

In fact, Dark Rey and Mipha are the only finalist returnees I can think of, though I may be forgetting some.

Monika returned in Greece one round into the Merge and ended up losing the FTC vote 5-4, but (sorry Ceph ily) for a time we used the term "Monika'd" to describe a player having a particularly bad FTC performance. Relevantly though, Monika wasn't out of the game for any meaningful amount of time, she re-entered the game when the first RI twist ended immediately after she was voted out.