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RavuRules wrote:

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As a Survivor Liberal, the incessant complaining of twists (which started about Season 3) and pre-season negativity grates, so I'm gonna go ahead and be the asshole and say:

GET OVER IT

All twists are not good. Explain to me why the F3 makes for a more entertaining or interesting season, and you'll have a point. But we don't bitch and moan about every twist (well, some do, and there will always be someone who hates a particular twist and voices their opinion on it, so it can seem that way), but a lot of us dislike the F3 because once the surprise is taken out, it really doesn't help the game and robs it of a particular aspect that has always made the game rather interesting.

So far the Final 3 has tended to result in a better outcome than the Final 2 would have.

The F3 worked in CI, yes (though if Becky had beat Ozzy in that jury vote, she wouldn't have gotten a much better edit and it might have been an interesting season regardless). It helped that it came as a surprise to them. It almost worked in Fiji, but thanks to some bold gameplay from the lesser players, it ended up failing miserably, giving us the first unanimous jury vote of all time (with less suspense then we've ever seen in any F2 situation). So as a surprise element, it worked one out of the two times it was employed. But the surprise is gone now. The cast knows and expects a F3, and that simply means gameplay will shift to having two goats and the strong players getting booted one or two TC's early, just like what happened in Fij. It's a dead twist. It doesn't improve the game. And that's why it sucks.

Borneo - The Final 4 TC would have played out the same way (2 pairs) and Rudy would have won

No. Kelly/Sue would have targeted Rudy, and Rich probably would have turned on his pal to have some shot at winning in the F3.

Marquesas - Given the circumstances, Final 4 TC would play out the same way and Kathy would have won.

Actually, Vecepia probably would have refused Kathy's deal and booted her at F4, leading to someone like Paschal winning.

I'm not interested enough in speculating about the other seasons. The bottom line is that the Final 3 tends to result in a more satisfying winner even if it does compromise the original concept somewhat.

Of the six seasons you listed, the F3 would have made the game more interesting in none of them. Rich would still have won Borneo, but we wouldn't have had Sue's "Rats and Snakes" speech. Tina would still have won Australia, but we wouldn't have had Colby's amazing move of booting Keith at F3. Ethan still would have won Africa, but we'd be missing the Kim's amazing immunity streak and her almost as amazing decision to cut Lex at F3. Marquesas would have had just as poor of a winner (even more poor, in fact, since Vecepia's gameplay was stronger than Paschal's), but we wouldn't have had the infamous boob slippage moment from Kathy that cost her the game. Amazon would have played out the same way, except the big schemer would have lost in a less dramatic fashion, and the "student overtaking the teacher" storyline wouldn't have transpired.
Point is, the F3 IC and vote has added an interesting and dramatic dynamic to the game for quite some time. The F3 only worked in certain, rare situations as a surprise twist (situations with an immunity hog, a strong player, and two goats, where the strong player is not booted at F4, and even then, it just gives us a face-off between the physical player and the strategic player) - it doesn't work at all as a known twist.

I wonder if we'll actually get an extra long final TC that bothers to focus on all three finalists this time?

Well, I doubt we'll have a F5 finale, which is certainly a good thing, because the episode count just doesn't provide for that. Even a F4 finale gives us a recap and one extra episode somewhere where nobody goes home.

Of course disregarding all of that, the biggest problem with the F3 by far is the pre-merge jury.

Fortunately, I doubt we'll have that with a 16-player cast, which is a very good thing, indeed. Granted, now that I've said that, the jury's going to start two boots into the game.

Why the hell would Jonathan vote for Becky?? Or Candice for that matter??

Jonathan hated Ozzy (and he says now that he doesn't know how he would have voted, but that's after Ozzy's golden edit and Becky's terrible one, after all). Candice had an alliance/friendship with Becky, and nothing like that with Ozzy.

I was under the impression that the Fiji cast did not know that there was a Final 3 instead of a Final 2.

They didn't (at least, not until the F4). The thing is, instead of being idiots like the cast of CI was, the players booted Yau Man, which robbed us of the CI-level jury vote. Like I said, the F3 only works as a surprise with a stupid cast that lets it work. And as a known variable, it doesn't work at all.

Sue/Kelly voted for Rich over Rudy simply because Rich was arrogant and cocky not because they perceived that to be a better game move.

No. They voted for Rich because he was a stronger threat in the F3 IC, and they planned to go to the F2 together. They were naive, but they did have game reasons for the things they did, even if their reasons sucked.

beatles20147 wrote:

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...make it purely endurance again. No difficult balancing, no arm strength, no water, no standing on a platform half the size of a postcard...put everyone on equal footing so to speak.

I've been a huge proponent of this for a long time. Make the other challenges as biased or as random as you want - mix them up, give certain types of competitiors various advantages, keep the players on their toes so they don't ever know who the real challenge threat will be (much like in BB). But in that final IC, all things need to be equal. Don't favor a body type or a certain type of intellect. Make it about raw will power and pure determination to win the game. At least that way, the "great" third place finishers have no good excuse for being sent packing at F3 - they lost their concentration and their drive to win. But when they go out because they're not the best balancer in the game, well, that's just silly.