OKAY I'M HERE.
I'd like to go into Barely Survivor's Returnee twists (particularly the Hole) and what each of them were, what mechanics they introduced, and why they worked so well to me:
The Hole had 6 people in it from start to finish and started with a double-elimination round. This was both to keep numbers at 6, and to force communication. I think this worked about as well as it could have, given we just thrust 6 people into a secret tribe. It was very likely that someone would get in the crossfire, so there was a little bit of playing the people who were on the other side of the vote to be favourable to you. This basically worked as well as I could have wanted it to, everything considered.
But the real shining star here is
Big Brother: Hole
, which was actually our take on how to 'fix' large RIs. There are a few problems we had with a large, steady RI like this, but the important one is that anyone who comes in late is at an inherent disadvantage. Being penalized for literally doing what the game wants you to do is no fun at all and is generally pretty miserable. So how do you fix that? By giving a reason to talk to, interact with, and work with the new players. It doesn't matter
how
this is achieved, but it needs to be achieved. We decided on Big Brother because it was an easily adaptable format that worked with our general theme of controlled, fake chaos. But I'm sure there are more ways to introduce a similar mechanic and maintain the very survivor-like nature of the game if you tried to think enough!
I also really liked being able to insert an outcast tribe into the game as well for a few rounds. It gave people a hint of "what to expect going forward", and then dumping all of them off into a Shipwreck ensured that a few of them would survive into new tribes and also make sure they had a chance to properly meet EVERYONE, so they couldn't be singled out easily for not talking to people.
I don't think it was any specific singular mechanic that made the Hole a particularly amazing RI, but how they all worked together to make RI less of a problematic process by removing as many faults as possible while buffing its strengths.