Hydra Discussion Thread

[Shadoweh]

The situation with P&D was a bit nuanced as we didn't want to softlock a hydra because of time zone issues (and would not happen if we didn't decide that to alternate a hydra head must actually participate in a challenge first, but I stand by that view) and it was definitely a better solution than any other one available at the time.

This was unfair as we weren't sat out of the challenge, we counted as one of the competing players Sirius just didn't submit anything during it. I would think your partner submitting a big fat zero and not speaking during the challenge is punishment enough.

[Shadoweh]

Uh anyways my opinion as one member of the hydra in Pantheon that was the least hydra-ey hydra: Just having someone take over every second challenge gave me huge peace of mind. Just days that I could take as a break from Survivor and then come back refreshed for PMing because I wasn't spending the first week of the game playing a board game or two hours cursing Baba Yaga's name. Of course it was an advantage. The hardest thing about Survivor is it takes so much time investment and you have two people's time blocks to work with. In my opinion the winning hydra obviously benefitted from having two people pumping out FTC content as well whereas the other finalist had empty timezones where he was, shock, busy.

TBH I don't know why Pantheon is being used as an example of why its a problem though: Pantheon was a Bastard Game. There was one Hydra on each starting tribe so it was like "representative player for the Tribe with massive advantage twist here". Maybe don't take the player with the massive advantage to the end? Regardless I agree hydras should be used as coaching experiences and people should not pick each other when hydras are allowed, because struggling players don't always know they're the ones that need help. It's something the mods should judge and decide. Run more games like Survivor Legendary with EXP tribe vs Newbie tribe with Coaches.