Seems like a simple idea to mix it up but I can't think of many instances that they've done this in recent history. Also feels like seeing someone do something physical would be a more visually interesting way to win a challenge.
I think every challenge ending with either a puzzle or some aiming challenge really contributes to the samey-ness of challenges. This might help with that.
Reminds me of the boat challenge in Marquesas and All Stars, where they assemble a puzzle boat and use that for the physical portion of the challenge.
My thought exactly. If you make the puzzle more tribe centric then putting in on the shoulders of one or two people the maybe make the physical part come down to one or two people it would flip what we normally see
The stacking crates puzzle from tocatins and HvV is another good one that requires the whole tribe to be involved. Though probably too intensive for a 5/6 person tribe of weaklings to actually do.
I think there are cases where people will never solve the puzzle, or will be so far behind that it is bad tv. …which isn’t bad if it is the last part of the challenge. If the puzzle is at the end I think you get more “comeback” opportunities.
Because it’s possible for a blowout, and a puzzle can almost always be edited to look like a nailbiter. They don’t think blowout challenges make for good TV.
I believe they prevented the blowouts with the edit. I am almost positive that the points-based challenges required more points to win on the island than how it was presented on TV.
For example, a game that required 7 points to win on the island would be shown to us at home as 3 points needed to win. A game that ended with a 7-2 blowout on the island would be edited down to a 3-2 nail biter to give us maximum drama.
Three tribes. A "win or lose" challenge doesn't work when second place is just as valuable as first, and they can't do the direct head to head stuff that they could do with two tribes. Everything is a time trial now because its really hard to come up with good challenges that involve three groups directly competing against each other.
They could do team or individual rewards during the merge, the one where you have to knock the other persons statue, flip the drums, ring toss, throwing challenges. I think a lot of ppl liked the coconut journey from 49
90%+ of the time, the losing tribe(s) or people would never get the puzzle done. The puzzles take 20x-30x longer to complete than the obstacle course takes to complete. That's why the obstacle course always comes first.
And then you end up with people dogging it through the obstacle course because they know they're going to win anyways. With the puzzle at the end, everyone has to try to get there fast because they don't know how the puzzle will go (which makes the obstacle course much more interesting).
It was great. Like honestly fuck it, use any leverage you can to get to the end. Good for him. Sure it wasn't the "fair way", but neither was Richard creating an alliance in Borneo. It's a million bucks on the line.
That's right. You generally want the tasks people have to complete in a multi-stage challenge to be ordered from lowest variance (similar finish times across individuals and teams) to highest variance (wide range of finish times based on skill or luck) in order to have suspense. Running, swimming, and navigating obstacles tends to be lower variance, while puzzles and precision tasks like snake mazes and throwing are higher variance.
I get the idea, but puzzles can take wildly different amounts of time to finish, whereas in 90% of challenges the physical portions are fairly close
I feel we’d likely get a bunch of challenges where 1 person finishes the puzzle and then just sprints to the finish with nobody near them, which would be pretty boring TV except for the handful of times where the 2 frontrunners in the puzzle take a fairly similar amount of time
If we want more challenges to end without puzzles, just have fewer challenges which contain a puzzle
The whole reason a puzzle is called “The great equalizer” is because no amount of lead is good enough to ensure a win, and more often than not the fastest puzzle solve is slower than the slowest obstacle course performance, outside of obvious outliers like Spencer memorizing the puzzle which came back for Cambodia
Maybe make the puzzle something the whole tribe can do and put the physical part on one or two people. I agree that they are the great equalizer but a blowout can be just as entertaining as a close challenge.
Blowouts are entertaining because they are rare. Having Hina tribe complete every challenge before the other 2 tribes even leave the puzzle just because they have a Jason on their tribe would get boring
Theres some great old challenge types that they never do anymore. I really like the "give these players a weapon they've never seen before and see if they can learn to aim" challenges. Survival trivia, 1v1 duals/ heats, and memory challenges would also help to avoid the typical two types now: endurance or obstacle course with a puzzle / target practice at the end.
I’m watching survivor Panama and one of the challenges has a player lie on a seat suspended by bungee cords. The rest of the team members pull on the cords and run around the structure to help the suspended player collect and place down flags. It was a super cool and unique challenge.
In an honest world, this would be fun. But in TV world, this would be an editing disaster. The reason it makes sense from a production standpoint to have a puzzle at the end is that it's very easy to edit a blowout in a puzzle into looking like there was a real competition just by only focusing on one tribe at a time. If the puzzle is first and one team blows the other out, they'll physically be in separate places
Some older team-based challenges combined the puzzles with physicality, such as the one that had to stake crates to unscramble a word in Tocantins, which essentially meant it was both at once. Another was the "rebuild the image" from Micronesia puzzle where contestants would race out somewhere, memorize an image, and build as much as they can remember while avoiding dud pieces, and then the next teammate would go. While it ended with a puzzle, it still had urgency. Last one I can remember would be sand digging one from Micronesia where they had to solve a puzzle to descramble coordinated to dig in the sand by dragging ropes, racing back and repeating. Once again, the puzzle was physical and completed by racing and digging.
The challenge is almost always won or lost during the puzzle. It's sometimes edited to make us believe that the "race" part of such challenges matter, but it doesn't really.
Put the puzzle at the front, but make it so that you can do the rest of the challenge without having to do it. But if you complete the puzzle you get a big shortcut through the challenge. Then its a strategy choice, and it allows teams that dont have puzzle sense to not just auto lose, which is why the same teams just keep getting whomped, even with them getting help or a massive head start
Example- puzzle, then you got to run into a maze to find chests with keys to the next stage. Doing the puzzle means you only need 2 keys. Do part of the puzzle and you need 4, skip it entirely and you need 7.
It’s an interesting idea in theory, but in practice it would likely make challenges worse not better. Puzzles have a tendency to have the largest discrepancy in time to complete. Meaning that the gap at the puzzle is likely to make the ending more predictable not less.
For example, Imagine watching the Rome doesn’t get a piece challenge in reverse. The competition would be over before it started and we’d just be waiting for it to end.
I personally would prefer they take out the obstacle entirely if there's an equalizer at all. There's absolutely no point, and it really just insults the viewer.
I think every challenge ending with either a puzzle or some aiming challenge really contributes to the samey-ness of challenges. This might help with that.
Reminds me of the boat challenge in Marquesas and All Stars, where they assemble a puzzle boat and use that for the physical portion of the challenge.
I was going to give the same example! It was a sweet idea.
My thought exactly. If you make the puzzle more tribe centric then putting in on the shoulders of one or two people the maybe make the physical part come down to one or two people it would flip what we normally see
The stacking crates puzzle from tocatins and HvV is another good one that requires the whole tribe to be involved. Though probably too intensive for a 5/6 person tribe of weaklings to actually do.
I think there are cases where people will never solve the puzzle, or will be so far behind that it is bad tv. …which isn’t bad if it is the last part of the challenge. If the puzzle is at the end I think you get more “comeback” opportunities.
They should do 2v2 or 1v1 mini obstacle courses for points, idk why they don’t do points based vs challenges anymore
Because it’s possible for a blowout, and a puzzle can almost always be edited to look like a nailbiter. They don’t think blowout challenges make for good TV.
I believe they prevented the blowouts with the edit. I am almost positive that the points-based challenges required more points to win on the island than how it was presented on TV.
For example, a game that required 7 points to win on the island would be shown to us at home as 3 points needed to win. A game that ended with a 7-2 blowout on the island would be edited down to a 3-2 nail biter to give us maximum drama.
What about something like the sumo challenge in HvV?
They probably take longer to film.
Three tribes. A "win or lose" challenge doesn't work when second place is just as valuable as first, and they can't do the direct head to head stuff that they could do with two tribes. Everything is a time trial now because its really hard to come up with good challenges that involve three groups directly competing against each other.
They could do team or individual rewards during the merge, the one where you have to knock the other persons statue, flip the drums, ring toss, throwing challenges. I think a lot of ppl liked the coconut journey from 49
90%+ of the time, the losing tribe(s) or people would never get the puzzle done. The puzzles take 20x-30x longer to complete than the obstacle course takes to complete. That's why the obstacle course always comes first.
And then you end up with people dogging it through the obstacle course because they know they're going to win anyways. With the puzzle at the end, everyone has to try to get there fast because they don't know how the puzzle will go (which makes the obstacle course much more interesting).
the stragglers could just cheat on the puzzle Rizo style and catch up
It drove me absolutely crazy this season how he do that multiple times and was so brazen about it.
It's not against the rules, so it's a part of the game. Not doing it would be silly.
It was great. Like honestly fuck it, use any leverage you can to get to the end. Good for him. Sure it wasn't the "fair way", but neither was Richard creating an alliance in Borneo. It's a million bucks on the line.
But how much of that is people being gassed from doing the physical part of the challenge while they’re already deprived?
Really good point
That's right. You generally want the tasks people have to complete in a multi-stage challenge to be ordered from lowest variance (similar finish times across individuals and teams) to highest variance (wide range of finish times based on skill or luck) in order to have suspense. Running, swimming, and navigating obstacles tends to be lower variance, while puzzles and precision tasks like snake mazes and throwing are higher variance.
Also adds to the puzzle difficulty if you are out of breath, doing it the other way around just doesn't have the same effect.
I get the idea, but puzzles can take wildly different amounts of time to finish, whereas in 90% of challenges the physical portions are fairly close
I feel we’d likely get a bunch of challenges where 1 person finishes the puzzle and then just sprints to the finish with nobody near them, which would be pretty boring TV except for the handful of times where the 2 frontrunners in the puzzle take a fairly similar amount of time
If we want more challenges to end without puzzles, just have fewer challenges which contain a puzzle
The whole reason a puzzle is called “The great equalizer” is because no amount of lead is good enough to ensure a win, and more often than not the fastest puzzle solve is slower than the slowest obstacle course performance, outside of obvious outliers like Spencer memorizing the puzzle which came back for Cambodia
Maybe make the puzzle something the whole tribe can do and put the physical part on one or two people. I agree that they are the great equalizer but a blowout can be just as entertaining as a close challenge.
Blowouts are entertaining because they are rare. Having Hina tribe complete every challenge before the other 2 tribes even leave the puzzle just because they have a Jason on their tribe would get boring
Theres some great old challenge types that they never do anymore. I really like the "give these players a weapon they've never seen before and see if they can learn to aim" challenges. Survival trivia, 1v1 duals/ heats, and memory challenges would also help to avoid the typical two types now: endurance or obstacle course with a puzzle / target practice at the end.
I’m watching survivor Panama and one of the challenges has a player lie on a seat suspended by bungee cords. The rest of the team members pull on the cords and run around the structure to help the suspended player collect and place down flags. It was a super cool and unique challenge.
https://youtu.be/Y8YSMjnVEoo?si=eCCZ-AzJLAPzt3Ig
In an honest world, this would be fun. But in TV world, this would be an editing disaster. The reason it makes sense from a production standpoint to have a puzzle at the end is that it's very easy to edit a blowout in a puzzle into looking like there was a real competition just by only focusing on one tribe at a time. If the puzzle is first and one team blows the other out, they'll physically be in separate places
Some older team-based challenges combined the puzzles with physicality, such as the one that had to stake crates to unscramble a word in Tocantins, which essentially meant it was both at once. Another was the "rebuild the image" from Micronesia puzzle where contestants would race out somewhere, memorize an image, and build as much as they can remember while avoiding dud pieces, and then the next teammate would go. While it ended with a puzzle, it still had urgency. Last one I can remember would be sand digging one from Micronesia where they had to solve a puzzle to descramble coordinated to dig in the sand by dragging ropes, racing back and repeating. Once again, the puzzle was physical and completed by racing and digging.
It'd be bad TV.
The challenge is almost always won or lost during the puzzle. It's sometimes edited to make us believe that the "race" part of such challenges matter, but it doesn't really.
Put the puzzle at the front, but make it so that you can do the rest of the challenge without having to do it. But if you complete the puzzle you get a big shortcut through the challenge. Then its a strategy choice, and it allows teams that dont have puzzle sense to not just auto lose, which is why the same teams just keep getting whomped, even with them getting help or a massive head start
Example- puzzle, then you got to run into a maze to find chests with keys to the next stage. Doing the puzzle means you only need 2 keys. Do part of the puzzle and you need 4, skip it entirely and you need 7.
It’s an interesting idea in theory, but in practice it would likely make challenges worse not better. Puzzles have a tendency to have the largest discrepancy in time to complete. Meaning that the gap at the puzzle is likely to make the ending more predictable not less.
For example, Imagine watching the Rome doesn’t get a piece challenge in reverse. The competition would be over before it started and we’d just be waiting for it to end.
I think there must have been something in the air today, because I had the exact same thought this morning.
YES. I would love to see puzzles not be at the end!
I vote for battle puzzle.
Two teams. Each on a raft. Throwing bean bags at each others puzzles, while they try to put together their own.
I personally would prefer they take out the obstacle entirely if there's an equalizer at all. There's absolutely no point, and it really just insults the viewer.
Or just have the puzzle
I vote hide the puzzles from each other so they can’t cheat/copy
I actually don’t mind when people “cheat” like that. Makes it more interesting
IDK, that would require some flexibility and creativity and that's not been apparent in recent seasons.