I <3 Memes said:
This thread is soggy from all the bitter tears. One of the parts of winning Survivor is not being the least liked person left when the jury votes. Russell can't pull that off. And outside of Hatch in Season 1 no player has won that way.
And there you go. Tom just spoke my next sentence. Having a great physical and mental game isnt good enough. How you treat people counts too.
SquirrelNuckle said:
Yeah the whole game of Survivor has gone down hill. Look at the first season, Richard pissed off everyone, but they all saw him as the best player because he did what it took to make it to the finals, thus he won.
Coolio McAwesome said:
Sandra revealed Russell's game to the Heroes after the merge and then offered to jump sides after JT was gone. She essentially won herself all five of of the Heroes votes with these two plays, and she did so without putting herself at risk. EVERY SINGLE HERO VOTED FOR SANDRA. That's enough to win the entire game (not to mention that she already had Courtney's vote wrapped up from her previous alliance.)
I think a huge part of the reason the jury is starting to feel disconnected from the game is due to its size and the 3 finalists. For instance, w/ Season 1 - Hatch had a jury consisting of 4 Pagong and 3 Tagi. He had the loyalty of his alliance mates from Tagi, and only had to get one Pagong to switch. Again though, bitter, bitter tears from the other 3 Pagong, who hated Richard for "playing the game evil."
The first Survivor was totally a social vote at the end. Only Greg, who saw the game for what it was, spared us Kelly being named sole survivor.
We now have nine jury members. Assuming you end up w/ 12 people equally split, and one former tribe makes it to the end, that means 3 of your tribe (in this case Villains) and 6 of the opposing tribe (Heroes) are on the jury. That's PROMOTING the opportunity for bitter tears. A smaller jury can allow a more narrow balance for how survivor typically gets played. But by having 3 people at the end, and counting back nine people, you almost assure that the destroyed alliance will have 5-6 members. An immunity challenge run by a dominant player could assure a 5-4-0 win, and we'll see more votes like this, where the opposing tribe votes for whoever was nicest to them, regardless of strategy skill.
The worst part is, this is the community of survivors, who to some aspect, should respect gameplay as king. The first season honored the gameplay mechanism, by crowning Richard over Kelly (who arguably played a better social game, esp. in terms of being friends with the Pagong). Of course, probably entirely different if Rudy wins the final challenge and votes out Kelly (winning 4-3 or 5-2, I would guess).
Still - I think by returning the formula to 2 finalists w/ 7 jury members - you can narrow that focus down a bit more to ensure the final alliances making up the jury are more balanced, creating closer/more accurate votes.